The Invasion Day – Chapter 29

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 29

A young soldier led the three of them to a relatively empty corner and said apologetically: “I’m sorry, because more survivors are coming now, the disaster relief tents and construction tents have all been used on the open space outside. There’s no tent left, so I can only let you sleep on the ground.” 

Tang Xuhai put down the things in his hands, patted the young soldier on the shoulder and said generously: “There’s no issue with that. Isn’t this already indoor? It doesn’t matter if we have no tent! We bring sleeping bags ourselves.” 

The young soldier let out a breath of relief and bid the three of them goodbye with a smile. Facing the man who saved the commander and his friends, the battalion felt that they must take care of these three well to pay back their life-saving deed. Thus, they desperately tried to provide Fu Shiwu’s group with what they could, as long as it was still within their capacity.

After putting the sleeping bags on the ground, Fu Shiwu pushed his glasses up, flattened the corners of his mouth and indifferently turned around to scan the crowded warehouse.

Tang Xuhai grimly looked at him and asked with curiosity: “What are you looking at?”

Fu Shiwu said, his voice slightly shaking with feels: “I feel like I’ve finally returned to the real world.”

“…” Tang Xuhai stopped dead in his tracks.

“…” Wen Zhaoming was stunned.

Who could tell that he was being sentimental inside with such a frosty expression? It’s clearly a ‘stupid human, get out of my sight’ sort of expression, okay?! Tang Xuhai gritted his teeth, wiped his face, helplessly squatted down and opened his sleeping bag, no longer paying Fu Shiwu any attention.

Wen Zhaoming held the three-layer multi-purpose lunch box and sighed to himself that Fu Shiwu was really an inscrutable person, while mentally seeking forgiveness for the fact he was unable to reach Fu Shiwu’s realm of thought.

After resting for a while, Fu Shiwu forced Tang Xuhai to stay still and successfully disinfected the wound on his hand. Under the threat of Fu Shiwu, his makeshift caretaker, Tang Xuhai had no choice but to listen obediently. He stretched out the back of his hand, letting it be wiped with a cotton swab dipped in disinfectant, but regrettably, when Fu Shiwu asked if he wanted to have it bandaged, Tang Xuhai ran away. 

Seeing that there was no way he could catch up with Tang Xuhai, Fu Shiwu turned to Wen Zhaoming. The moment he lowered his gaze, Wen Zhaoming immediately faced his palms upward in cooperation.

Wen Zhaoming’s scratches were much more serious than Tang Xuhai, whose back of hand was scraped by the alien’s hooks. After Fu Shiwu wiped them with disinfectant, Wen Zhaoming declined Fu Shiwu’s offer to bandage them, saying that it was better to let the wounds stay open. Bandaging these wounds in such hot weather might not necessarily help them recover faster.

Tang Xuhai walked one round outside and returned with a few pieces of wood and a hammer. Biting on a nail, he shooed the other two off: “Go outside for a walk, don’t stay here and get in my way!”

Being chased away, Fu Shiwu touched his nose and followed Wen Zhaoming’s wheelchair out of the warehouse.

At this moment, Wen Zhaoming said: “Shiwu, my wheelchair will run out of power soon. Can we ask the officer just now to find a way to recharge it?”

This electric wheelchair of Wen Zhaoming was extremely convenient to use, with the only requirement that he must remember to recharge it. For the past one week, Wen Zhaoming always turned off the power whenever it wasn’t in use, but even so, the battery that had already been stretched out was eventually about to run out.

“Okay, then let’s look for the young soldier just now.” Fu Shiwu nodded and walked beside Wen Zhaoming.

Just like Tang Xuhai, Wen Zhaoming had his self-esteem. He never wanted to let people push his wheelchair, for it would make him particularly aware of his physical disability.

Through observing Tang Xuhai’s stubbornness, Fu Shiwu could understand Wen Zhaoming’s sentiment, so he walked by Wen Zhaoming’s side all the way and didn’t push his wheelchair.

Wen Zhaoming’s electric wheelchair was a relatively expensive foldable model, which was known as the lightest electric wheelchair in the world.

Because of that design principle, the wheels of this wheelchair weren’t as big as a bicycle’s wheels like an ordinary wheelchair, but much smaller than that. Thus, in contrast with ordinary wheelchairs whose wheels could be hand-pushed without the need for any power, this kind of electric wheelchair would be useless if there was no electricity. In such a situation, it had to count on others to push it.

Wen Zhaoming wouldn’t want to get into that kind of awkward situation.

Fu Shiwu walked into the busy army base.

Because the army lived temporarily in this central warehouse together with civilian survivors, the base here wasn’t as strictly managed as others, where outsiders were completely prohibited from entering. Many people came and went to exchange information, and Fu Shiwu and Wen Zhaoming’s arrival only attracted the others’ eager and curious eyes.

Fu Shiwu remembered that the young soldier was a signaller who was ordered by the commander to take care of their needs.

After walking around for a while in the chaotic base, Fu Shiwu finally spotted a tent specially equipped with electronic devices. Wen Zhaoming also said: “I saw that soldier.”

“Uhm.” Fu Shiwu walked over at once.

The little soldier was very young, likely in his early twenties, with lively round eyes on a face covered with a layer of camouflage paint. Seeing them coming, he smiled, revealing his spotless white teeth: “Yes? What’s the matter?” 

The young soldier was especially happy to help them.

Kneeling down, he looked at the type of charging port and battery voltage on Wen Zhaoming’s electric wheelchair, then he thumped his chest and said that there was no problem.

While the young soldier went to find the transformer and charging cable, Fu Shiwu and Wen Zhaoming’s attention was entirely pulled by the LCD TV on the side.

Now the nationwide TV programme schedule was in a mess. Many provinces’ TV stations were no longer working, and only Huaxia News station was still committed to providing people with all kinds of critical news.

And what was now on TV was the latest research findings from the Institute of Science.

On the relationship between humans’ special abilities and the sky veil!

Studies had shown that this sky veil brought a component that contaminated the water sources on Earth’s surface, resulting in a large number of human deaths. This component was named ‘heterogeneous molecules’ by experts and scholars.

It was these heterogeneous molecules that caused countless cases of high fever, diarrhea and vomiting in humans all over the world during the initial stage of the red clouds phenomenon. In the end, any treatment was fruitless and most people died of organ failure.

These heterogeneous molecules had now flooded every corner of Earth, and the matter was just whether they existed in large amounts or small amounts.

Even for those healthy people who didn’t develop the disease during the initial stage, it didn’t mean that they weren’t contaminated by the heterogeneous molecules!

It was just that these people were in the prime of their life, or were in good health, so their bodies could temporarily suppress the heterogeneous molecules. Following the red line’s expansion into the red veil after a week, the density of the heterogeneous molecules in the atmosphere increased and these healthy humans who originally suppressed these molecules might no longer resist them.

Fortunately, humans had such a thing called the immune system. With this system, those who absorbed the heterogeneous molecules would branch into three different outcomes. Outcome No. 1: Ineffective immunity, which meant that the person’s high fever, vomiting and diarrhea would persist until they died of organ failure; Outcome No. 2: Suppressing immunity, which meant that the person would remain exactly the same and showed no change at all; and Outcome No. 3: Assimilating immunity, which meant that the person would also have a high fever, but after the fever subsided, he would develop a special ability!

Ineffective immunity was the case that appeared the earliest. Previously, a person under this outcome would die despite being admitted into the hospital, and even now, he basically could only wait for death. In the case of suppressing immunity, this person’s immune system was remarkably strong, so the heterogeneous molecules couldn’t make him sick, but they might slightly strengthen his body. For assimilating immunity, it was challenging to determine whether his immunity had successfully worked against the molecules or not, but what could be said was that eventually, the heterogeneous molecules mutated the body’s internal system, developing genes that had never been known to exist in human history.

The mechanism on how the immune system worked hadn’t yet been standardised. Who would be immune and who wouldn’t? There was no definite answer for now, for the findings were changing as each day passed by.

At least until now, most people fell under either ineffective or suppressing immunity. Only a small number of people would experience assimilating immunity.

The process of immunity assimilation would cause a lot of sweating, and if it went on for too long, the heat might even burn the brain, causing mental damage to the person. And to make this process end faster, according to the current experiments, only one substance was effective: antibiotics!

“Antibiotics?!” Fu Shiwu and Wen Zhaoming said in unison.

When Tang Xuhai and Wen Zhaoming were sick, Fu Shiwu used lots of antibiotics on the two of them. Tang Xuhai later said that Fu Shiwu was treating them blindly and Fu Shiwu did feel a bit uneasy inside, but no one would expect that he would strike such a fat chance!

At this time, many people in the central warehouse were having a high fever, but they were being gradually cooled down and infused with normal saline based on conventional medical procedure. The amount of antibiotics used on them was only half of what went into Tang Xuhai and Wen Zhaoming, while the amount of other medicine used was barely one third.

As for why antibiotics had this effect, scientists were currently conducting further research.

While Fu Shiwu and Wen Zhaoming was fully immersed in the TV programme, the young soldier found a suitable transformer and cable.

Charging the battery would require some time, but Wen Zhaoming couldn’t linger around for that long so they decided to take out the battery and leave it here, then Fu Shiwu would push him back.

To ease Wen Zhaoming’s unspoken discomfort, along the way, Fu Shiwu discussed with him about the heterogeneous molecules.

The moment the two of them returned to their spot in the warehouse, they were shocked.

Tang Xuhai had built a simple fence with those wooden boards and sticks to isolate them from the others’ complicated stares and the hard-to-judge surroundings.

“Tang Xuhai! You’re really capable!” Fu Shiwu exclaimed in fright.

This small space was less than 20 square meters, which was nowhere comparable to the bomb shelter they stayed in earlier. The shelter also felt much better against this space where they had to mingle with strangers.

At least Fu Shiwu felt very pleased.

Tang Xuhai triumphantly lifted his chin, bit his cigarette butt and let out a puff of smoke: “How can you just call my name without seeing who I am? Of course I’m capable!”

The smoke blew at Fu Shiwu, who immediately frowned when he caught the smell: “It smells odd.” 

Tang Xuhai froze on the spot, then he threw the cigarette on the ground and stepped on it.

Only now did Fu Shiwu feel that he might have said something wrong and despairingly corrected himself: “I’m sorry, it’s not like I don’t want to let you smoke.” 

Tang Xuhai sat down on his sleeping bag and said with a tint of grievance in his voice, like a dejected kid: “I also know these cigarettes aren’t good, but the brand I used to smoke isn’t there anymore.”

Fu Shiwu was at a loss. He didn’t know what brand Tang Xuhai used before, but he had seen Tang Xuhai smoking more than once. That cigarette smelled sweet and pleasant, while this cigarette had a nasty smell that seemed to choke his throat.

Tang Xuhai took out the cigarette pack and dropped it on the ground. He bothered to smoke this brand just to live through his nicotine dependence, but if the taste was this bad, he might as well stop now!