Chapter 129

“Buzz—”

It was just dawn.

The emergency broadcast from the Thunder Pavilion blared like an air raid siren, its sound waves rippling through the entire human underground base. Chaotic footsteps and piercing cries for help echoed in the cavity outside the curved corridor.

Horne kept his head down as he walked from the door of Heavy Ward No. 1 at the end of the medical district corridor toward the exit on the other side.

“Cannot diagnose the condition—send the patient to the heavy ward!” A nurse twisted her head and shouted to someone on the other side. Her voice tore past Horne’s ear, instantly sweeping behind him and fading away. “Emergency call from Residential Block B35!”

His footsteps were extremely slow, extremely heavy.

Click. The door beside him opened, and a doctor rushed out. “No empty beds in the heavy ward! Take them to a regular room!”

The wind from his run lifted Horne’s hair.

The sounds trailed behind, while the light and shadows moved forward.

You Wenjie had been wheeled into the heavy ward a long time ago, but there had been no news of any improvement.

The light from inside the ward passed through the door, gradually illuminating Horne’s figure.

“So hot!” A high-pitched shout came from within the door.

Bang! The door slammed shut, and the light vanished.

You Wenjie’s symptoms were similar. At first, it was like a scalding burn—his skin showed scorch marks and spontaneous combustion without any visible flame. They had thought it was an isolated case, but within a few hours, one after another occurred. They were rushed to the medical district, yet not a single one saw their symptoms ease.

Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. The information display screen in the ward area kept popping up emergency requests, the sounds growing louder. These requests came from every area and room in the Thunder Pavilion. Horne glanced up, frowned, but didn’t stop.

The medical district had yet to identify the cause. Overnight, cases had surged, but none could be confirmed.

He turned a corner and nearly kicked someone leaning against the wall, sitting on the ground and wailing loudly.

He didn’t know what had happened or why it had suddenly turned out like this. The longer it went on, the more his forced calm gave way to growing anxiety.

They should have set off already, but…

The noise grew louder, and the clear sound of military boots thudding slowly on the floor grew nearer.

“Help! It hurts so much!” A scream rushed out, slamming into Horne.

“Self-service cooling devices are available for pickup! Everyone, stay calm!” The nurse’s voice darted back and forth as she distributed cooling devices to ease the patients’ skin burns, but it was useless. The low temperatures did nothing to alleviate their pain.

“Ward Nine!”

“Right away!” She turned and hurried toward her ward, muttering as her voice brushed past Horne. “Why is everyone like this at the same time?”

This feeling was deeply unsettling because Horne had seen it more than once—people who were supposed to set off, screaming as they charged into the medical district, flames seemingly burning behind them, their skin rotting inch by inch.

The supreme commander had yet to awaken, the soldiers hadn’t assembled, and Horne’s fingers, rubbing against each other, hadn’t stopped.

There wasn’t enough time. Not enough.

This unease peaked three hours after their scheduled departure time had long passed.

The medical district exit was right in front of him.

Thud! The exit door was shoved open hard, the outer door slamming back against the wall. The inner automatic door hadn’t even opened yet when a person burst in, crashing headfirst into the transparent glass.

“Help! Save me, save me!” He shouted, losing all reason, his voice hoarse and desperate.

The moment the automatic door opened, he pitched forward and fell face-down on the ground.

Horne wasn’t far from him and had just started to go help when, in that instant, he clearly saw the man’s back.

What was that…?

Horne froze abruptly, every movement stiff like a marionette. He walked toward the medical district entrance, faster and faster, until he reached the fallen man.

The man had no intention of getting up. He lay there on the ground as the closing automatic door kept clipping his waist, then bouncing open, then closing again. More people kept rushing in from outside, stepping on him a few times, making him cry out in pain.

But Horne’s entire attention was on his back.

Wings. Bone structure.

Alien bone structures had grown on his back. Though they were just six tiny frameworks—like juvenile alien forms, flapping feebly—the eerie black and veined patterns were unmistakable to Horne at a glance.

“It hurts so much—save me!” He burst into sobs, feeling only the pain in his body, completely unaware of the mutated flesh and bone.

Not just the bone structures—his exposed skin was also rotted from fire burns.

Horne took a step back, that breath still caught in his chest.

The man lifted his head, his pupils contracting sharply. He used every shred of sanity left to point behind Horne and shout, “The building’s collapsing!!”

Horne whipped around.

Loch City’s buildings began disintegrating from the rooftops, one after another. Particles rose like steaming vapor, pulling upward, then propagating like dominoes. It started with the city walls, then the residential buildings on either side, spreading left and right—one, two, three…

Han Ya raced toward the Thunder Pavilion to rendezvous with Horne, while Wen Yu chased the direction of the spreading disintegration, sprinting forward through the city streets. The dissolution kept pace with her, and the particles surging upward into the sky grew denser.

People fled in terror from the buildings, screaming as they looked up at the top floors where the particle “rain” poured inward, shouting that the end of the world had come.

Doomsday arrived with the first ray of sunlight piercing the dark clouds.

Wen Yu panted, running onward without stopping.

There was crying from a nearby alley—a child of a few years old standing alone at the end, seemingly separated from adults.

Her footsteps paused for half a second. She glanced back at the particles rapidly sweeping away like a hurricane, about to continue the chase when the child’s cries exploded in her ears again.

They didn’t know what was happening to the city or what would happen in the next few seconds. A lost child here was almost certainly doomed.

Wen Yu silently memorized the direction of the fleeing disintegration, then turned and ran toward the child.

Urgent footsteps pounded from outside inward. As he passed the still-jammed automatic door, Han Ya leaped over the man and roared, “Horne!”

The human who had grown alien bone structures lay motionless on the ground. In the few seconds it took Han Ya to sprint over, the corpse’s skin rapidly turned black, solidifying into a crystalline rigidity, half-transparent like glass. The next patient rushing in from outside kicked the corpse as he passed.

Crack—

Thud! A heavy body thudded to the ground amid cracking sounds, screams rising one after another.

“Why is this happening all of a sudden?” No sooner had Horne asked than, with a crack from across the way, a man burst into loud sobs.

“Ah! Ah! I can’t move!” His arm, red from burning, gradually solidified, spiderweb cracks forming like cheap plaster. Terrified the vitrification would spread, he smashed that part of his body himself. Black-crystal fragments and flesh burst out together, but the glassing didn’t stop. It steadily engulfed his shoulder, neck, chest, brain—until his entire body turned half-transparent, twisted into a glassy shell, his expression frozen in that moment of agony.

Han Ya stood dumbfounded. “I… I don’t know either.”

At those words, his heart clenched, massive panic surging up.

At the same time, Horne thought of the same possibility. He forcibly suppressed the pounding in his throat and said tightly, “Where’s Wen Yu’s position?”

“Follow me!”

Horne and Han Ya charged into the streets together, sprinting at top speed toward Wen Yu’s location.

Wen Yu’s dot hadn’t completely stopped, but its movement speed was already abnormal. Even a leisurely post-meal stroll wouldn’t be that slow—unless she could barely move.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” Han Ya cursed explosively.

They sprinted past a couple embracing and sobbing, thick black resin-like substance surging under their skin, spreading along their clasped hands, ultimately enveloping, connecting, and hardening around them.

Cars lay overturned or crashed together on the streets, thick smoke rising. People ran or hid.

But the farther the two went, the more they couldn’t suppress their racing heartbeats.

Indeed, overnight it had become like this. The cause was unknown, no countermeasures found—

Humans were turning into aliens.

Buildings were turning into particles.