Chapter 107: “Crack”
Night.
Lina lay in bed, swinging her bare feet as she savored the memory of the frog she had eaten earlier that day.
She had worked exceptionally hard, toiling all the way into the afternoon before heading up to the second floor with her sister and the Jia brothers to enjoy a truly “luxurious” feast.
They had ordered the Spicy Bullfrog and the Tomato and Beef Brisket Stew.
She had never known frogs were edible, and neither had her sister.
Jia Wen and Jia Si hadn’t known either, but that frog was downright delectable.
The meat was tender yet wonderfully firm and springy.
It was just really spicy.
“Spicy” was a word Lina had only truly come to understand after the Chinese Restaurant appeared.
Along with “spicy,” she had learned “sweet,” “sour,” “salty,” and “savory.”
A few surviving books in her home contained stories depicting life before the Cataclysm. Lina had only ever read about how diverse food once was.
Back then, every dish had its own unique flavor profile.
Turns out, it was all true.
Lina loved spicy food. When it hit her tongue, there was a sharp sting at first, followed by a pleasant, tingling numbness.
Jia Si, however, couldn’t handle spice at all. It made him tear up, so he much preferred the Tomato and Beef Brisket Stew.
The stew was sweet and tangy, pairing wonderfully with steamed white rice.
Lina loved the stew, too.
Halfway through their meal, Brother Long Shi and his group had finished their shift and come up to eat, sharing some Crispy Fried Whitebait with them.
The little fish were fantastic—crunchy, savory, and wonderfully fragrant.
She loved every single thing served at the Chinese Restaurant!
Each bite was pure joy.
Lina rolled over, then abruptly popped upright.
Washing her face nearby, Lilin noticed her little sister scampering toward the table barefoot. “What’s wrong?”
“Tomorrow, I’m going to order the Crispy Fried Whitebait for myself!” Lina declared. “I need to write it down! Sister… how do you write ‘crispy’ again?”
“Uh… why don’t you just write ‘fish’?”
“Oh, right!” Enlightenment washed over Lina’s face. “Then how do you write ‘fish’?”
“…Just draw one.”
…
“Didn’t see that coming, did you? You were only locked away for a couple of days, and the outside world changed completely,” Long Shi said, leaning in close to Long Ya.
“I’ve tolerated you for long enough. Keep talking like I committed some heinous crime and see what happens,” Long Ya warned, raising a fist.
“Auntie! Look at her! She just got out and she’s already resorting to violence!”
“Stop causing trouble.” Long Qian hauled Long Shi into the outer room by his collar.
“Who’s causing trouble? Long Ya is just throwing a fit because she saw my savings earlier!”
Old Hu grabbed Long Shi’s arm. “If she decides to thrash you in a minute, I won’t be able to hold her back. Think twice.”
Long Shi blinked. “? You think I can’t take her?”
Qiu Jie muttered, “Hard to say.”
“Alright, that’s enough. Go to sleep early, everyone. You only get this noisy when your bellies are full,” Geri grunted, pulling his blanket up over his shoulders.
…
“It’s incredible, Boss! My eyes were darting all over the place at the Chinese Restaurant today!”
“Now I finally get why the Dark Star folks looked at us like we were country bumpkins. They literally thought we had no worldly experience,” Zhuo Tian remarked in hindsight.
Heixi carefully peeled away the final fragment of shell, revealing a pristine roasted chestnut kernel. Looking up, he asked, “What was that?”
“Nothing… Boss, can I bum another chestnut off you?!”
Toot-toot-toot-toot—!
Piercing whistles cut through the night air.
Simultaneously, crimson fireworks detonated across the dark sky, launched in rapid succession from the clock tower in the central plaza.
Four flares, one after another.
Asleep or awake, every resident of Seed City was jolted into consciousness, cracking their doors open in bewilderment to gaze outside.
The moment the color of the fireworks registered, their expressions twisted in shock.
“Whistles? But room inspection already finished. What’s happened?”
“Hurry, go out and see!”
“Crimson fireworks?!”
Timber doors flew open one after another. Groggy residents poked their heads out, the lingering haze of sleep instantly evaporating.
“Crimson flares… that’s the Rainy Season alarm?!”
“How can that be… isn’t it only July? The Rainy Season shouldn’t be here for at least another month!”
“Would the clock tower broadcast false intelligence? Didn’t you hear the whistles? Out of bed, now!”
The previously lively atmosphere of the residential district vanished, replaced by a tense, suffocating anxiety that rippled outward with every blast of the whistle.
Despite the abruptness of the alarm, the residents didn’t descend into mindless chaos upon pouring out of their timber shacks.
Under the direction of the city guards, everyone quickly organized into disciplined, orderly units.
Citizens pressed into immediate service were divided into squads to carry out assigned duties.
Some retrieved sandbags to shore up the low-lying zones throughout the city.
Others took distributed flashlights to inspect the entire urban drainage network, ensuring every runoff channel was clear of debris.
During the Rainy Season, no standing water could be allowed to linger within the walls for any extended period.
The remaining citizens brought out water-hauling vessels, heading to the city’s freshwater reserves to collect supplies and seal them securely within their homes.
Queues formed to collect adequate rations of matches.
Occurring twice a year, the Rainy Season followed a predictable pattern, and the populace had long memorized the emergency protocols.
Even so, anxious murmurs steadily circulated through the crowd.
“This is bizarre. First, the mutant beasts around the perimeter spike in number, and now the Rainy Season arrives ahead of schedule… You don’t think it’ll be like five years ago, do you…?”
“Spit that out! Don’t bring down bad luck! Let us live, will you?”
“I need to go back and dig up my raincoat.”
“What good is a raincoat? We’re doomed. Before every Rainy Season, the Three Great Cities always deploy Awakeners to cull the mutant hordes beyond the walls, but there’s still no sign of them.”
“Exactly. The mutant numbers were already surging recently. Once the rains hit, what kind of horrors are they going to swell into?”
“And what if we run into a mosquito swarm…? Plenty of folks died during the swarm earlier this year, and this time we don’t have visiting Awakeners…”
“Who says we don’t have Awakeners? Zhou Xue and her people awakened, didn’t they?”
“They aren’t official military personnel.”
“The folks from the Red Flag Society awakened too. They’ll definitely step up when push comes to shove.”
“Still, they can’t compare to the official Awakener battalions from the Three Great Cities…”
…
“Sigh… I finally managed to earn a bit of coin today, and now the Rainy Season is already upon us. What if I get drafted to purge the mosquito swarms?”
“Draft duty runs on a rotation. It’s only a single day per person.”
“Easy for you to say! A full day out there—what happens if one of those mutated mosquitoes bites you?”
“Like you won’t get bitten if you dodge the draft?”
“At least we have the Chinese Restaurant now. We can purge the toxins, at the very least.”
“…If a mosquito from the swarm bites you, detox won’t save you anyway. Between the violent fevers and the festering necrosis, people drop dead from infection before the poison even finishes running its course,” a man with a ragged beard grumbled, his face heavy with despair. “The proboscis on those giant mutated mosquitoes is as thick as a thumb. One stab and you’re done for.”
“Tsk, you haven’t been to the second floor, have you?” Long Shi remarked, setting down a heavy sandbag and shaking his head.
“…What’s special about the second floor?”
The scruffy-bearded man had only learned about the Chinese Restaurant yesterday. He hadn’t accumulated much coin and indeed hadn’t set foot upstairs.
Earlier that day, cradling a single roasted sweet potato had been enough to make him beam with joy.
“Garlic Broccoli—repels airborne insect mutants for one hour post-consumption. Second-floor dish.”
“Shredded Pork with Runner Beans! Reduces the risk of wound infection by fifty percent for twenty-four hours post-consumption!” another voice called out.
Long Shi looked up, recognizing the speaker from the gathering at Dark Star’s lodge earlier.
“Well, well, what a coincidence. You memorized the menu too?” Long Shi asked.
“Merely humble diligence; I know it off by cart,” Hall answered proudly.
“…Don’t you mean ‘off by heart’?” the scruffy-bearded man corrected.
Long Shi snapped, “Mind your business.”
Hall added, “Too much mouth!”
“What about the bone-chilling cold that freezes your limbs stiff during the rains…?”
“Sugar-Roasted Chestnuts!”
“Cold Resistance boosted by ten percent! What about the Crispy Fried Whitebait?”
“Cold Resistance boosted by ten percent! Spicy Bullfrog?”
“Cold Resistance boosted by seven percent!”
The two carried on their impromptu trivia contest as if no one else were around.
“Wait, wait, wait, the second floor has that many dishes?!”
The man asking the question had visited the Chinese Restaurant for the very first time today, having missed yesterday’s plaza gathering and only catching wind of the news this morning.
“Naturally.”
“Are they expensive?”
“Twenty or thirty coins a plate? Put in a solid day of honest work and you can easily afford one. You’ve seen the sugar-roasted chestnuts, haven’t you? Eight City Coins a bag.”
“Fair point…”
“A few runs to the farmlands and it’s practically within reach…”
The murmurs continued to ripple through the gathering.
Every Rainy Season plunged the populace into sheer dread.
Seed City’s towering ramparts sheltered every citizen, but in exchange, beyond their mandatory labor in the Black Fields, they were obligated to submit to the city guards’ command whenever the rains came.
Donning official gear, they would form round-the-clock patrol units under the leadership of the guards to eradicate the mutated swarms penetrating from the skies.
Their primary objective: prevent the insects from nesting and laying eggs within the perimeter.
Hyperactive mutant vegetation, torrential breeding of mosquito swarms, followed by septic wound infections and raging contagions… each cycle claimed countless lives.
Yet now, a “Chinese Restaurant” stood beyond the West Gate.
Suddenly, a profound sense of reassurance settled over their hearts.
Firefly City.
Rumble—!
Through the torrential downpour, a gargantuan, purplish-crimson man-eating blossom parted its cavernous maw. Thorns as hard as steel bristled along its massive vines, which whipped violently against the reinforced ramparts.
Crack.
A deep fissure spiderwebbed across the face of the stone wall.
