Fu Erdie’s arm and shoulder were completely torn and pierced, hanging limply on the ground.
She thought she could succeed with one blow, but she didn’t expect the awakened individual’s reaction and strength to be so much stronger than hers.
Underestimated!
Fu Erdie shrank to the side, trying to reach for the hammer in the corner.
Seeing this, the old man swiftly slapped her, causing Fu Erdie’s head to tilt and blood to seep from the corner of her mouth.
“Damn it! You think you can mess with me!”
He kicked forcefully, hitting Fu Erdie’s sternum directly.
Fu Erdie fell at the edge of the flower bed.
This time, the sound of her sternum breaking wasn’t an illusion, it was real.
Her vision blurred, her hearing ringing, and her breath was obstructed. Each rise and fall of her chest felt like a bone spur poking at her surrounding organs.
A spurt of blood sprayed out, and before she could recover, even more violent kicks and punches rained down on her.
Fu Erdie’s head was grabbed and slammed against the wall.
Bang, bang, bang, the balcony trembled from the impact.
She reached out to grab the man’s face, but her hand fell short, unable to reach him.
Her chest received a heavy blow from a knee, causing Fu Erdie unbearable pain, curling up her body.
In the bedroom, the dog’s cries were desperate. It scratched at the door, causing it to creak, but it couldn’t make the man pause for a moment.
“Who do you think you are?” He grabbed Fu Erdie’s hair, forcing her to look up at him, “I am an awakened individual! It’s your good fortune that I decided to come here. Daring to harm me? Can’t you see the situation? I am a man, I am an awakened individual, from now on, I am God!”
He spat and pointed at his chin, “Living pretty comfortably, huh? Using the air conditioner every day. I don’t even have an air conditioner, but you, a weakling, have one! Turn off your damn air conditioner!”
Bang!
Fu Erdie’s head hit the ground heavily once again.
Her mind was hazy, feeling only pain, hurting all over her body.
The dog’s cries made her reluctantly open her eyes.
A tear in her clothes appeared at some point, and the man began to take off his pants. It was clear what he intended to do.
Fu Erdie remembered some news she often saw online and thought about the brief communication in the early morning that didn’t mention the awakened.
Perhaps it wasn’t that they didn’t know about the awakened, but that they were afraid to mention them.
The zombie virus didn’t selectively affect humans based on their character or morality. The same went for the awakened.
You never knew whether the awakened person you encountered was good or evil.
And in these twenty days of the apocalypse, most people had realized that it was not a matter of mutual assistance between people, but a competitive relationship.
Those who found a hiding place didn’t dare let others in.
Those who wanted to come in would make noise and fight over scarce food.
Vehicles were limited, and the space in vehicles was limited. If you wanted to store as much food and fuel as possible, you couldn’t let unrelated people into the vehicle.
With ordinary people, there might still be room for negotiation. But what could everyone do when faced with an awakened individual?
What could the person issuing announcements do?
Would it make the hidden people more panicked, fearing an invasion that could ruin their homes?
Or would they accept the existence of the awakened, seeking their protection, only to be abandoned?
Perhaps the government already understood that for most ordinary people, the awakened were harmful. That’s why they used their limited time to issue announcements about survival in the apocalypse, covering various aspects of life, to enable more people to have the ability to survive, instead of revealing the situation of the awakened and causing more people to panic.
And the awakened individuals were likely not many. Maybe out of a thousand survivors, only one would encounter a malicious awakened. So, let the other nine hundred and ninety-nine people have a little less fear and a little more ability to deal with other dangers with a death rate exceeding one in a thousand.
Fu Erdie looked at the shadow above her, numbly thinking that she was that one in a thousand. The resident of Apartment 14-1 was probably also that one in a thousand.
The man became impatient. But just as he was about to remove his pants, Fu Erdie mockingly curled her lips and, seizing the opportunity, forcefully kicked him between his legs.
He cried out in pain, clutching his groin, but in his anger, he raised his head and met a dark head.
Fu Erdie didn’t know where the hostility came from. Her head collided with the man’s chin, and in the moment of his daze, she opened her mouth wide and bit down on the throat in front of her.
She became like a frenzied beast, refusing to let go.
The man, forgetting about his third leg, forcefully grabbed her injured arm, trying to tear her away.
But Fu Erdie seemed to have lost her sense of pain. Her bite became even more ferocious.
In the struggle, she tore through the man’s major artery.
Lack of blood flow to the brain and shock was only a matter of moments. He gradually stopped fighting back and slumped to the ground.
Fu Erdie, however, still didn’t release her bite, her mouth and face covered in blood, mingling with the torn flesh of her own mouth, blurring the line between human and beast.
She bit down forcefully, relentlessly, until she, too, finally lost too much blood and passed out.
Meanwhile, the old man, under the dual pressures of blood loss and suffocation, lost his life.
The dog continued scratching at the door, imitating its owner’s actions of opening the door. With its hind legs standing and front legs straight, it clumsily pawed at the door handle, managing to open it a crack.
The dog’s nails squeezed into the gap and continued to hook inward.
The door opened.
It rushed out to bite the intruder.
The intruder didn’t move, seeming to be dead.
The dog turned around to nudge its owner.
But as soon as it nudged, the scent of blood on its owner became stronger.
The dog instantly stopped moving, instead lying down beside its owner, staring at her with wet eyes, filled with concern.
One human and one dog, unaware that the window was slowly closing on its own.
And the air conditioner inside the room started running again.
On the ground, the intruder’s blood was being drawn towards something, reaching the roots of the “environmentally friendly plants” and being completely absorbed by the roots.
A root slowly, sluggishly, followed the trace of blood, winding its way outward, gently bypassing Fu Erdie’s body, and piercing into the intruder’s body.
A pale green secretion, almost transparent, spread from the root tip to the intruder’s entire body, enveloping him like a grotesque humanoid agate.
The body began to dissolve slowly.
The “environmentally friendly plants” seemed to accurately distinguish between Fu Erdie’s blood and the intruder’s blood, consuming all of the latter while leaving the former on the ground. The red slowly broke down into faint white lights, seeping into the ground and spreading throughout the balcony, living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen—one by one.
Some of it also entered the dog’s body over time.
The dog sensed that something had happened but felt very comfortable. It laid back down, keeping a watchful eye on its sleeping owner.
After the white lights circled the entire room, bathing the house in their radiance, they returned to the balcony and penetrated into Fu Erdie’s body.
The wounds on Fu Erdie’s body had long stopped bleeding, and her muscles, organs, and bones were slowly healing at an incredibly slow pace.
She fell into a deep sleep, oblivious to everything happening in the house.
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