The woman’s face was ashen, like dark clouds filling the sky.
A sense of suppression weighed down from an unknown source. She couldn’t imagine how much pain one had to endure to wear such an expression of despair.
Even in the pitch-black darkness of the garbage dump, she had never seen this kind of despair in the eyes of the homeless; they mostly held a sense of muddled apathy.
The woman before her felt like a puppet whose soul had been hollowed out. Her bones barely held up her skin, and some unknown force was keeping her breath going, sustaining her life.
An overwhelming sense of helplessness rose within Xu Xiaoyou.
"It’s dangerous outside. You don’t look too badly hurt, so you should go back to wherever you were hiding before," the woman said. "Children shouldn’t be running around..."
"What about you?"
"I have to go."
"Where?"
"To find my daughter. She’s still in this city."
Xu Xiaoyou watched the woman silently walk away, further and further, until she vanished from sight.
She wanted to say that there were likely no living people left here, and that her daughter had probably already met a tragic end.
But she wasn't sure if those words would cause the woman’s gaunt body to suddenly collapse if she actually said them.
The woman had risked her life to save her just now. Perhaps it was only because she looked young and bore some resemblance to her daughter?
Maybe the woman knew the truth herself, but her heart simply refused to accept it.
Her encounter with the woman was like two small streams momentarily merging in a vast sea. For a long time after that, as Xu Xiaoyou wandered the city with Anya, she didn't encounter another living soul.
It had already been four hours since she had ventured deep into Alley No. 5.
She realized a very serious problem.
How was she supposed to leave Alley No. 5?
How long would this bloody supper time last, and when would it end?
She had felt something was wrong for a while now.
According to the information, Alley No. 5’s supper time was from 8:15 to 8:30, lasting only fifteen minutes.
And now...
It had been a full four hours since she entered Alley No. 5. That eerie blood moon still hung high in the sky, its position unchanged, casting its blood-red light onto the city below. Everywhere the red moon touched was deathly silent.
Furthermore, what felt even more bizarre was that even now, she felt no hunger or thirst, nor did she feel tired.
Despite having engaged in combat with that dismantler and consuming a large amount of physical energy, her body showed no negative feedback at all.
It was already the middle of the night, yet she didn't feel the slightest bit of sleepiness. She was completely alert.
Anya was the same, showing no signs of fatigue, still spiraling around her with plenty of energy.
Normally at this time, Anya would have been exhausted, curled up and asleep.
There was definitely something fishy about this. Xu Xiaoyou silently noted the anomaly.
Another three hours passed. Xu Xiaoyou stared at the blood moon on the horizon, her vision becoming slightly blurred.
Under the blood-red moonlight, the air distorted slightly. Staying in this environment for so long made Xu Xiaoyou instinctively uncomfortable, and her desire to leave grew stronger.
Based on the explanations from the Lovecraftian games she had played before, her sanity was slowly dropping.
In an alley where few people passed, she saw a row of people kneeling by a wall, hands clasped as if praying for something.
They were long dead. Sharp objects had been driven into their throats; they had ended their own lives in a corner of the world.
Another ten hours passed.
Sitting silently inside a cake shop, looking at the smooth and delicate cream on the cakes in the display case, decorated with frosting and looking as exquisite as fluffy clouds, Xu Xiaoyou felt no appetite at all.
In fact, she felt nauseous.
The cake shop had been smashed and looted. More than half of the glass display case was shattered, and shelves were knocked over everywhere.
From this scene, Xu Xiaoyou judged that in the early stages of the disaster, people must have gone mad trying to snatch these survival supplies.
The department stores and various shops along the commercial street had all been looted, but then something else seemed to have happened, and people stopped their violence.
Staring at the cakes in the display case, Xu Xiaoyou spaced out.
She wondered how long these cakes had been sitting in the counter since they were taken out of the oven, considering the cream hadn't melted at all.
During this time, she had tried to walk back the way she came, only to find that the wall was gone. Rather, the entire path she had taken had disappeared.
The edges of the city had been replaced by an endless shattered void. Like an isolated island, the former junctions with the city streets now consisted only of a blood-red, hazy chaos.
Humans are creatures that go mad in loneliness, especially in such an eerie, unknown, and dangerous environment.
But what made Xu Xiaoyou suffer wasn't the loneliness, but the inability to sleep.
It had been more than a day since her last sleep. Her mind was still very clear, but whenever she closed her eyes, countless thoughts would pop up.
She was certain this wasn't just difficulty falling asleep—it was an impossibility.
She yawned.
That was her forty-fifth yawn this hour.
She didn't know why she was keeping track of such meaningless things.
Her body trembled.
Was her mind starting to have problems too?
Half a month later.
Xu Xiaoyou stood on her tiptoes on a chair, pulling a rope tight, intending to put her neck through the loop.
Her eyes had become dull and lifeless like dead-fish eyes, and the expression on her face was one of solemn resolve.
Anya was terrified, hurriedly grabbing the blonde girl’s body and crying out "Waa-waa," fearing she would actually do something irrational.
"I'm just kidding, Anya."
Xu Xiaoyou grinned and took the noose off her neck.
"Let's go. We'll look around again today and see if there's any way out."
Walking along the deserted streets, looking at the scenes she had practically memorized, Xu Xiaoyou sighed internally.
In her heart, she no longer held much hope of leaving. Living was fine, but dying was also okay.
Half a month!
For an entire half-month, do you know what she went through!?
Only after experiencing this did Xu Xiaoyou realize her personality was actually quite optimistic.
She hadn't slept for even a single second in half a month. She didn't feel thirst, hunger, or fatigue. It was as if her physical state had been frozen the moment she entered Alley No. 5!
No sleep, no food, no social interaction. She felt like a victim being repeatedly tormented in some twisted game.
She gradually began to understand the lunatics in Alley No. 5 whose mental states had been distorted.
In this situation, those who could maintain their sanity like her were a minority.
In the daily process of maneuvering around those dismantlers, Xu Xiaoyou clearly felt her reaction time and thinking becoming duller.
Several times, she had almost met with an accident. If Anya hadn't been there to protect her, she probably would have been packed into a dismantler's jar by now.
Xu Xiaoyou was dejected.
When her mind was confused, she would occasionally see hallucinations, mistaking those blood-reeking monsters for survivors or seeing the souls of the dead appearing in rivers of blood, howling at her to give them back their lives.
From time to time, she heard whispers, as if a group of people were constantly muttering in her ear.
She had almost forgotten why she had entered Alley No. 5 in the first place.
Oh, right. It was to learn about these dismantlers and find a breakthrough for debt collection.
If she had known this would happen, she wouldn't have stepped a single foot into Alley No. 5 even if someone killed her!
If this continued, her brain would break.
Would she also be assimilated into a howling monster?
Xu Xiaoyou thought pessimistically.
Just then, she suddenly heard the sound of gunfire from a street in the distance!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
It was the sound of a rotary machine gun firing.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
How nostalgic.
Xu Xiaoyou felt a wave of emotion.
She and Anya quickly rushed toward the street where the noise was coming from.
A muscular man was currently standing there with an expressionless face, carrying a gatling gun. The barrels spun frantically as a dense hail of bullets poured out like a metallic beast roaring, shredding all the lunging dismantlers to pieces.
Before long, all the dismantlers on the street had been cleared out. The muscular man spotted Xu Xiaoyou hiding in the distance, and his voice carried no inflection:
"Come out."
Xu Xiaoyou hadn't seen a living person in over half a month. Even if he had suddenly fired a burst at her, she would have found it nostalgic.
Nothing warmed the heart like seeing a familiar face.
"So there really are other people here. That's great."
The muscular man spoke like a cold machine, his words devoid of any emotion.
As she got closer, she realized that the man’s eyelids were propped up by two toothpicks, pierced through by the sharp points. His oversized clothes, nearly soaked through with bright red liquid, could faintly be identified as clerical robes...
Just as Xu Xiaoyou was thinking that although he looked normal, his mind had likely collapsed some time ago, his next words made her incredibly excited.
"Follow me. I know the way out of Alley No. 5."
Rate on N.U.
