Chapter 23: Extreme Heat, Bloodsucking Mosquitoes

The crowd that had been slaughtering each other was soon nearly wiped out.

Blood stained the Jiang family’s courtyard red, and the corpses were like worthless heaps of rotting meat.

Zhang Qingzhi and Shen Baoying stood upstairs, watching the horrific scenes unfold. Only now did they truly grasp how terrifying the apocalypse was.

It turned people into walking corpses—or into merciless killing machines.

Ding Sheng was beaten to a bloody pulp by his two younger brothers, yet the medicine box he clutched was snatched away by someone else.

In the next instant, the three brothers, driven by hatred, all reached for each other’s throats and strangled one another until none of them moved again.

The last surviving one quickly picked up the crushed medicine box, but it felt too light—clearly empty.

Enraged, he tore the box apart and kicked away Ding Sheng’s corpse. Then, he roared at the remaining people still fighting,
“The medicine’s fake! Those bastards tricked us!”

His words were like a pause button—everyone froze.

Hands trembling, people opened the boxes one by one…

Empty…
Empty…
Still empty…

Their eyes, once filled with anger, turned into murderous rage.

“We’ll drag them down with us even if we die!”

They picked up sticks, hammers, kitchen knives—and launched another wave of violent assault.

Smashing walls, prying open doors, hacking at security bars…

But Jiang Si had anticipated a breach when she started tossing explosives.

If they couldn’t hold the line, she planned to use safety ropes to evacuate from the rear.

After all, her RV had already been modified—mice couldn’t chew their way in.

They could find a place, light a circle of fire, and the whole family could safely spend the night.

She instructed everyone to wear safety harnesses. Just then, a buzzing sound—like a tidal wave—rushed over them.

Jiang Si looked up and her pupils shrank in horror.

A massive, dark swarm of mosquitoes blotted out the sky and descended like the heavens collapsing.

In mere seconds, every living thing on the ground was engulfed.

And they were coming fast—straight for the house.

“Get inside! Now!” Jiang Si shouted.

The others were just about to ask why they weren’t escaping when she shoved them into the building.

She locked the rooftop door tight and hurriedly pulled out wormwood insect-repellent spray, dousing everyone from head to toe.

Only then did she say, breathlessly,
“All the mosquito eggs have hatched!”

Almost immediately, the house was engulfed in a deafening buzz, as if the earth itself were trembling.

The sky darkened in an instant.

Even the crazed mob outside trying to break in fell into eerie silence.

The metal shutters on the second-floor windows hadn’t been pulled down yet. Jiang Si rushed up and saw mosquitoes the size of longan fruit slamming into the glass.

In the nick of time, she yanked down the metal shield—just as the glass began to shatter.

The infernal buzzing enveloped the house. No one dared relax. Everyone stood tense, spraying more repellent again and again.

After a while, Shen Baoying’s worried voice broke the tension:
“What if the rat swarm comes at the same time?”

The room fell silent for a few seconds.

Burning fuel indoors would cause poisoning, but a small fire wouldn’t stop the mad swarm of rats.

Outside, they’d be devoured by bloodsucking mosquitoes.

It felt like… despite being prepared for everything, they were still cornered.

But Jiang Si remained calm.
“If mosquitoes can suck our blood, they’ll suck the rats’ blood too. Don’t worry—we’ll be fine.”

Jiang Linhai’s eyes lit up.
“Yeah! The rats will get drained to death, and the mosquitoes will burst from overeating!”

The mood lightened a little.

Grandma added hopefully,
“If we can just make it until morning…”

Jiang Si pulled out several iron boxes from her dimensional space—stacking them like Russian dolls in the living room. Then she surrounded the outermost box with a ring of fire and handed everyone oxygen tanks.

“Five layers of iron sheets. Let’s see if they can bite through that.”

They all crawled into the innermost box. It was so cramped, they could only sit without moving.

Cramped was tolerable—the real problem was the heat.

Jiang Si scattered ice cubes in the gaps between people. Everyone wore protective suits. Xiaohei and Dahei (the dogs) lay across their laps, actually the most comfortable ones of all.

After a while, night fell.

Jiang Si sensed the rats had begun to move. Everyone held their breath, ears straining.

It sounded like the mosquito swarm was attacking the rats—the buzzing above their heads weakened.

Apparently, the mosquitoes were more vicious than the rats.

After five hours, it was probably dawn.

Jiang Si crawled out of the iron boxes, her knees completely numb.

Xiaohei and Dahei were full of energy—they were the only ones who managed to sleep.

The buzzing had died down significantly. Jiang Si cautiously lifted a metal sheet and looked out the window.

What she saw stunned her.

The sky was pitch black—filled with mosquitoes.
The ground was pink—completely carpeted with mosquito eggs.
Beneath the layer of eggs were countless rat corpses… the human bodies were already buried beneath.

In her past life, there had been bloodsucking mosquitoes—but never this many.

And certainly no swarms of rats feeding them enough blood to breed on this scale.

It was terrifying beyond imagination.

Shen Baoying covered her mouth and whispered in horror,
“Sisi… can we still leave this place?”

“If we wear enough protective gear, maybe we’ll be okay?”

Jiang Si frowned.
“We can leave… but I don’t know if anywhere else is safer.”

“If it’s the same outside, there’s no point in going. And if we run into something worse than the mosquitoes…”

She remembered that in her past life, mutated plants only appeared in the later stages of the apocalypse.
But now that everything was happening ahead of schedule, she no longer had control over what might come next.

Everyone let out a heavy sigh. They ate some compressed biscuits and started reinforcing the house again.

One day… then two…

Jiang Si noticed that the adult mosquitoes in the sky were dying off, but the red mosquito eggs were growing larger.

Everyone grew increasingly anxious, worried that mutated mosquitoes would take over the world.

But just as the eggs were about to hatch, temperatures soared.

Even with ice indoors, it hit over 40°C (104°F). Conservatively, the outdoor temperature had to be at least 70°C (158°F).

One morning, Jiang Si got up and was stunned.

The mosquito eggs had all exploded. Every single one.

Apparently, it was simply too hot for them to survive.

Everyone rejoiced.

Grandma opened a window to ventilate and touched a ray of sunlight.
“Hiss—!” It was like getting burned by a lit cigarette.

She instantly pulled her hand back. In less than a second, a huge blister formed on her finger.

Jiang Si quickly shut the heat-proof window and sprayed water on her grandmother’s hand to relieve the pain.

Jiang Linhai frowned.
“Has the sun mutated now?”

Jiang Si applied burn ointment and looked out the window, sighing.
“It’s solar radiation. The sun will scorch your skin. Stay outside for an hour, and you’ll be a dried corpse.”