The Invasion Day – Chapter 9

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 9:

Fu Shiwu had to say that Tang Xuhai was right. It was indeed possible that his workplace would still have unopened jugs of water.

Organisations like them usually ordered 19-liter water jugs in bulk so that they could share among many different departments. The water station staff would then deliver a large amount of water jugs every time, and the departments would change their own water after the jug had been used up. The next time the water station came, they would exchange empty jugs with new ones.

In his first two years working here, Fu Shiwu used to take on the labourious task of changing the water.

When the car arrived at the design institute, Fu Shiwu looked into the security room and found no one there.

After parking the car, they headed for the office and no one was there either.

“Where did everyone go?” Fu Shiwu was puzzled.

“Where is the water?” Tang Xuhai put both hands in his pockets and followed behind Fu Shiwu.

“Over there.” Fu Shiwu led Tang Xuhai up to the 2nd floor and they located lots of unopened jugs of water in a room several doors away from his office.

“This is good, there’re quite a lot.” Tang Xuhai nodded in satisfaction.

Offices like Fu Shiwu’s didn’t even have a staff canteen, let alone any valuables. Salaries were directly transferred into their account, so of course there was no cash lying around. Till now, the building hadn’t suffered any damage.

With the water being contaminated at the moment, most people would go to places like supermarkets, water stations or liquor shops. There must be few people who had thought about checking out companies and organisations like this.

Tang Xuhai started to move the water while Fu Shiwu went to his office.

The office was messy, its tables and ground covered in designs and drawings. Fu Shiwu looked down and picked up a piece of paper with a large shoe print on it from the ground.

Tang Xuhai carried one jug in each arm and put the water next to Fu Shiwu’s Mazda, planning to go up to get two more. Looking at Fu Shiwu’s fragile chicken-like figure, Tang Xuhai was convinced he wouldn’t have the strength to help carry them.

“Tang Xuhai! Tang Xuhai, look!” As soon as he reached the floor, Fu Shiwu ran towards him waving a piece of paper.

“What?” Tang Xu squinted, trying to adapt to the change in light.

“Look at what’s written here, I guess they’ve all gone to this place, right?” Fu Shiwu said with uncertainty.

It was a notice of a settlement site, saying that because of the concentrated outbreak and the lack of order in the city, the government had decided to set up a command post in the central warehouse near the eastern suburbs of Yun City.

This command post was meant to serve as a preventive measure, where there would be sufficient supplies of food and necessities for everyone. In the event that the outbreak could no longer be controlled, the populated urban area of the city would be isolated as a whole and the command post would be transformed into a temporary settlement.

The notice was dated back to a few days ago. At that time, it hadn’t been discovered that the outbreak caused by the polluted components in the air wasn’t actually infectious. By right, this sort of notice would only be sent to the main authorities of the city in order to ensure all operations went on normally. However, the heads of their design institute had always been in a good relationship with the leading figures of this current situation, so it should be no surprise that they obtained this notice in advance.

It was obvious that the heads of the design institute had run off to the warehouse in the eastern suburbs.  

After reading it, Tang Xuhai put the paper back into Fu Shiwu’s hand, then he looked at Fu Shiwu and asked nonchalantly: “Do you want to go there?”

Fu Shiwu shook his head and said: “If it was before the water incident, maybe I would have gone.”

Tang Xuhai smiled, picked up two jugs of water and stuffed them into the trunk, then put the other two jugs on the back seat.

Setting the command post in the central warehouse was quite a comprehensive plan. With its location being in the eastern suburbs, transportation would be convenient. The central warehouse was also the largest distribution center of Yun City and there were also several other large warehouses in its vicinity.

Considering the government’s ability, it should be easy to pull some supplies in advance. But once there was a problem with drinking water, would this temporary settlement be able to handle all the people who lacked clean water in the city?

Fu Shiwu was not an idiot and could see the outcome by himself.

Putting the car back into the underground garage, the two of them decided to not return to the spot where they slipped down with the rope. It would be too difficult to climb with four jugs of water on their backs.

Tang Xuhai led the way and Fu Shiwu climbed up the elevator shaft whose door had been pried open since earlier.

“Are you going to climb to the 18th floor?” Fu Shiwu said in a shaky voice.

“Hah!” Tang Xuhai laughed.

“Why are you laughing?” Fu Shiwu looked at him with an unamused expression.

“It’s okay, you don’t need to climb to the 18th floor.” Tang Xuhai took out the plastic rope he found on Fu Shiwu’s car and began tying the four jugs of water together.

Looking at the extremely high elevator shaft that seemed to have no end in sight, Fu Shiwu felt really helpless that his effort to try to share the loads with Tang Xuhai was being looked down on.

“How about you put two jugs in my car first? After you finish drinking, you can bring the remaining two jugs up?” Fu Shiwu pondered for a bit and suggested.

Tang Xuhai gave him a strange look: “How long will a jug of water last you? Shouldn’t it be used up within a day?”

Is this bastard a water bucket or what?!

“Wait, why do I have one too?” Fu Shiwu’s eyes widened in surprise.

Tang Xuhai raised his eyebrows, then he said calmly: “There are four jugs of water, so of course you have two.”

Fu Shiwu was lost for words for a moment, then he said with his usual paralysed, stern expression: “Thank you for thinking about me, but I actually have a water purifier at home.”

Tang Xuhai now understood: “Well, you mean these four jugs of water belong to me?”

Fu Shiwu felt utterly helpless.

“You should have told me early!” Tang Xuhai shook his head and said with a condemning tone: “Do you know how much effort I had to go through for these four jugs of water?”

As he stared at Tang Xuhai’s back, Fu Shiwu rolled his eyes and muttered to himself: “But you didn’t ask me!”

In the end, Tang Xuhai took only one jug, and instead of climbing directly to the 18th floor, the two of them went to the 1st floor and exited the shaft. Eventually, they used the elevator to go up.

“I thought that you don’t take the elevator?” Fu Shiwu casted a surprised look at Tang Xuhai, who was leaning to one side against the elevator door.

“If there’s an elevator, why wouldn’t I take it?” Tang Xuhai looked at him as though something wasn’t quite right with his head.

“…” Fu Shiwu really didn’t know how to explain this. After a moment of silence, he said: “Aren’t you always taking the stairs whenever I see you? I actually thought you were claustrophobic.”

“I was exercising.” Tang Xuhai said lazily.

Do people actually exercise by climbing stairs on a seriously hot day?!

“Okay, you were exercising then.” Fu Shiwu nodded and changed the subject: “Is one jug of water enough for you? Why don’t you bring the other jug?”

This guy is so strong, he should have absolutely no issues carrying two jugs of water.

“You have a water purifier at home, why do I have to spend energy moving two jugs upstairs?” Tang Xuhai said as-a-matter-of-factly: “I only need one jug to contain water. Aren’t you not lending me your water later?”

Tang Xuhai looked at him with a “I didn’t expect you to be so ruthless!” expression.

Fu Shiwu almost spit out a mouthful of blood!

After a tragic period of being stung left and right by the bastard, Fu Shiwu dejectedly returned to his apartment.

By this point, the people who had headed out were also coming back. Some of them discovered that the elevator shaft could also be used to get in and out. This was easier than climbing up to the 3rd floor with a rope, but there were a lot of people wanting to use the elevator, so they had to wait until it no longer moved up and down.

Fortunately, there were two elevators in the building, so eventually one was dedicated to be the entry and exit point.

Just when everyone thought that they could have a peaceful night, the red clouds that hadn’t be seen for the whole day emerged again. Not only that, the clouds seemed to have garnered enough energy and were now spreading even further, casting a red shroud all over the whole sky.

If you hadn’t seen the clouds slowly unfolding into this red shroud with your own eyes, you might have mistakenly thought that it was just a normal cloudy day, when the light was reflected onto the thick clouds like a typical astronomical phenomenon.

Before people could even react to this appalling change, they saw black dots descending from the sky, one after another.

“What is that?!”

“Zoom in further!”

“Telescope, go and take my telescope!!!”

“My God! What is that monster?!”

“Is that… ET?”

Some people had an ominous feeling and immediately ran home, while some people became extremely thrilled and ran towards the place where the black dots had fallen down. There were even a few daredevils who took out their mobile phones to take close-up pictures of these uninvited guests from the sky.

There, they found a creature with a height similar to an average man, roughly 1.5 meter, its head elongated like a gourd, its forehead broad but its jaw narrow.

Although it also had the facial features of a man, its mouth looked nowhere like a human’s, rather, it could only be said to resemble an animal’s mouthparts. A slender neck lay below the head, its shoulders sloping. Its arms and legs were incredibly thin and there wasn’t a single hair or scale on its whole body.

The strangest things were that its hands were like the tentacles of an octopus, while its toes had thick, pointed nails!

These uninvited guests were surrounded by a faint, thin shroud. After the creature had landed safely, the shroud seemed to have completed its mission. It swayed slightly and disappeared!

The daredevil young man stared at his phone screen with excitement and even muttered to himself: “If this video goes online, my Weibo will be on fire! There’ll be a ton of reposts!”

But his companion felt uneasy and grabbed his clothes: “Let’s leave, somehow this creature feels dangerous.”

“What are you afraid of?” The man continued to fiddle with his phone and said disdainfully: “It just looks like a chicken with all the feathers plucked off. We can take it down in mere minutes, perhaps we’ll even make it to Huaxia News!”

Unfortunately, this daring plan couldn’t be realised, for it was immediately destroyed by the ‘ET’ that the two of them had been looking at. 

The creature opened its mouthparts and made a threatening sound. Before the young man could understand whether he should be laughing or be frightened, the creature pounced its whole body onto him. Its two upper limbs wound around his neck and its sharp mouthparts swooped his head as though biting into an apple.

“Aaah!!!” His companion screamed, and before he could turn around to escape, the creature loosened one of the tentacles and had it wrapped around his neck in the blink of an eye!