Chapter 11: The Eve of Transcendence

By then, the signal would be cut off, everyone would fall into a coma, and when they awoke, they would be faced with seven straight days of torrential rain.

At that point, only signals within the same city could be restored; there would be no way to contact the outside world.

The thought made her pause. She felt she was rather kindhearted, working so hard to save humanity.

She deserved some sort of Saintly Mother award.

Bah. As if she cared.

A shower fell that afternoon. Once it passed, the sky was washed a brilliant blue, and a dazzling rainbow appeared.

Qin Xiaoyu blinked and reached toward it.

“Fairy tales say that a rainbow appears after the rain, but they never say that it can vanish in an instant. If only I could hold that brilliance tightly in my hands…”

A rather unpleasant singing voice came from behind her, even a little like a drake’s croak. She could not help turning around.

It was her younger male cousin, Qin Ran, singing. The moment he saw her look back, he bared his teeth in a grin.

Qin Xiaoyu: …

He sang very well. He just should not sing again.

Seeing that he was about to open his mouth once more, she immediately cut him off. “Second Brother, if everyone can raise a battle pet after the apocalypse, what would you want?”

Qin Ran paused and fell into thought. After a long while, he said, “A tiger?”

Qin Xiaoyu rolled her eyes. “Second Brother, stop dreaming. Think of something realistic.”

Qin Ran stared at her. “Huh? Why?”

Before Qin Xiaoyu could answer, Qin Hao explained, “There are no wild tigers in the Southern Province. Only twenty-six are kept in captivity, and the nearest place to us, Songshan Zoo, has just five. Do you really think you could get one?”

Qin Xiaoyu nodded. “I’m afraid someone would beat you to death before you even got the chance to fight for one.”

Qin Ran: …

His little sister seemed to have become somewhat less adorable.

Qin Xiaoyu turned to Qin Hao. “What about you, Big Brother? What would you like to raise?”

Qin Hao wore an inscrutable expression. “That is a question worthy of serious consideration. I cannot make a hasty decision. It requires the most careful deliberation.”

Did choosing a great goose count as making a hasty decision?

It did seem rather hasty. Perhaps she should consider changing her choice?

Nearby, Qin Ran had already squatted on the ground and begun frantically browsing an encyclopedia of animals on his phone.

There were some secrets family members could share. Other than the fact that Qin Xiaoyu had been reborn, everyone knew more or less everything they needed to know.

At fifteen and eighteen, the two teenagers were no longer children. They could not go on living under the protection of their elders forever; they had to learn to stand on their own.

Qin Xiaoyu patted her head. She felt that something about her was wrong. Having returned from the apocalypse with only three days left, should she not be terribly anxious? Yet she could not feel anxious at all. Instead, she kept thinking about having fun, walking the goose, and teasing the dogs.

“Big Brother, Second Brother, come down and help!”

Gu Suyun’s voice rose from downstairs. The brothers slipped their phones into their pockets and hurried toward the staircase.

Qin Xiaoyu followed them down.

The delivery had arrived, and there were quite a lot of packages. Almost every one of them was extremely heavy.

She went over for a look, and the corners of her eyes twitched uncontrollably. Had they cleared out the shop’s entire stock? There were so many entrenching shovels—at least a hundred, by the look of them.

She picked one up. She had no idea whether it was any good, but it certainly had some weight to it.

There was also a huge crate nearby. It took five or six people to carry, and when she saw everyone busy with it, curiosity got the better of her. She went over and started opening it herself.

Relying on her considerable strength, she tore the crate apart by force.

When she finally opened it, she was utterly stunned. Good heavens, what an enormous cast-iron pot.

“Mom, if you stew something in this, it would be enough to feed several hundred people at a banquet, wouldn’t it?” Qin Xiaoyu tried to lift the cast-iron wok. She raised it barely half a centimeter before it dropped back down.

An Xian had not thought much of its size when she bought it, but now even she felt it was somewhat excessive. Still, how could an adult so easily admit to making a mistake?

“Didn’t you say that after the apocalypse, both plants and animals would become enormous, and that people and animals would eat much more as well? According to you, if this pot isn’t big enough, it might not even hold a single chicken.”

Qin Xiaoyu: …

It really did not need to be this enormous. A diameter of eighty centimeters would have been enough. This one was a full meter and twenty centimeters across—truly absurd.

It was about as large as the round table at home.

She opened another crate. It looked large but was not particularly tall. Before long, she pulled out an enormous flat-bottomed pan.

Wonderful. This one was also a meter and twenty centimeters wide.

She ran a hand over it and ended up with dirt all over her palm. She turned to look at her mother.

The corner of An Xian’s mouth twitched. “If the chickens are going to be that big, their eggs certainly won’t be small either. You’ll have to fry at least one for every person in a single pan. How could you fry them if the pan weren’t large enough?”

That was the trouble with buying things online. Without seeing the real item, everything seemed perfectly suitable. Then, once the eagerly awaited purchase arrived, one discovered that the dimensions were completely wrong.

Return it? Not a chance.

Qin Xiaoyu waved the pan around, then held it upright in front of herself. It seemed perfectly usable as a shield.

Now that she had discovered the fun of opening packages, she continued.

Was this an iron shovel?

Oh, no—it was an extra-large spatula.

Why had they bought so much gauze?

There was candy, too, in her favorite coconut flavor.

What was this? Oh, a hair clipper. What on earth had they bought that for?

A pale, slender hand reached out and picked up the hair clipper. Its owner gave Qin Xiaoyu a faint smile.

“Come sit over here. I’ll trim your hair for you.”

Qin Xiaoyu’s eyes flew open. Forgetting all about the last package, she turned and ran.

An Xian gave a cold laugh. “Go on, run. You may escape today, but you won’t escape tomorrow.”

After waiting outside for half a minute and seeing her mother put the clipper back in its box, Qin Xiaoyu immediately darted back. She picked up the purse An Xian had set aside and took out a hundred-yuan bill.

“I’m taking a hundred yuan to get my hair cut. You won’t be angry, will you?”

Qin Xiaoyu thought that if her mother did get angry, she would simply return the money.

“Do whatever you want.” An Xian rolled her eyes.

Qin Xiaoyu ran off with the money.

She spent twenty yuan on a short, choppy haircut. Passing a burger shop, she spent seventy yuan on a meal. With the remaining ten yuan, she bought a stalk of sugarcane.

See? She was actually quite good to Big Shrimp Brother.

On her way back to the Chinese medicine clinic, she suddenly heard screams from the street. The crowd immediately began to stir.

Qin Xiaoyu sensed that something was wrong and hurried her pace.

“Look at the horizon! Why is it so dark?”

“Is night falling, or is it about to rain?”

“It’s only a little after three. How could it be getting dark? And look at the weather—it doesn’t seem like rain is coming.”

“Why do I suddenly feel so uneasy?”

“That’s the black hole people have been talking about online. The end of the world has really arrived.”

…

It was not until she reached a quieter area that Qin Xiaoyu had the chance to turn around and look.

At the edge of the sky, a black arc was slowly taking shape. The darkness was so absolute that it seemed capable of seizing the soul. The temperature around her dropped all at once, no longer stifling as it had been moments earlier.

The crowd in the street gradually descended into chaos, and some unstable people began causing trouble.

Qin Xiaoyu quickened her pace and raced back to the Chinese medicine clinic. With a bang, she shut the door, then hurried upstairs and leaned against the window to look outside.

But she was facing the wrong direction and could not see the black hole.

The outside world was in turmoil. Worried, the adults went out to find out what was happening.

They returned soon afterward and shut and locked the doors and windows on the first floor.

At that moment, they could not help but begin worrying about Qin Bainian and Qin Baisong, who had yet to return.