11: Chapter 11 Ordinary People's Nights

The ride-hailing car arrived three minutes later.

It was a silver-gray BYD with paint that was neither new nor old, and an expired annual inspection sticker stuck to the bottom right corner of the front windshield.

Su Chen pulled open the back door and got in.

The mask was tucked into the inner pocket of his trench coat, but that black trench coat still looked too formal in the back seat—like someone late for a funeral.

The driver glanced at him through the rearview mirror.

He was in his early thirties, with a square face and a patch of unshaven stubble on his chin.

His eyes were small but bright, possessing the specific energy of someone used to driving the night shift; tired, but holding on, and after holding on for so long, it had become a habitual cheerfulness.

A red safety charm hung from the rearview mirror, its tassel swaying twice as the car started.

Next to it, a plastic clip held a photo.

A family portrait.

The man was the driver himself, wearing a blue polo shirt, smiling widely.

Beside him was a woman in a ponytail; not beautiful, but clean and neat, her eyes curving into crescents when she smiled.

In the middle, a five or six-year-old boy held a lollipop, grinning at the camera.

At the park entrance, with a locust tree in full bloom in the background.

The photo had been clipped for too long; the corners were curled, and the colors had faded a layer.

But those smiling faces were very clear.

Su Chen withdrew his gaze.

"Little brother!"

The driver spoke first, his voice quite loud,

"This outfit of yours—it's cosplay, right?"

Su Chen paused for a second.

Black trench coat, stand-up collar, buttons done up to his Adam's apple.

Coupled with the hairstyle from running for six minutes, covered in sweat, and the fierce look he hadn't managed to retract yet.

It really did look like he had escaped from a comic convention.

"Yeah."

Su Chen nodded, not explaining.

The driver laughed.

"I knew it. Handsome young people just know how to have fun. My son likes anime too; he comes home every day posing like Ultraman, it gives me such a headache."

He turned the steering wheel, and the car merged into the main road.

In the deep autumn night of Jingzhou, streetlights retreated one by one, their orange light sweeping across the car window.

"See that?"

The driver tilted his chin, gesturing toward the photo,

"My son, Huzi, six years old, in senior kindergarten. Don't look at him like that just because he's small; he's very smart. His head teacher says this kid is university material."

Su Chen saw the driver's face in the rearview mirror.

He had seen that kind of smile before. The uncle selling pancakes downstairs at his rental apartment had it, and the book friends in his web novel group who showed off their daughters' drawings had it too.

A happiness that needed no reason.

"I told my wife, as long as Huzi studies hard, I'll work until my back breaks to send him to university. Jingzhou has good educational resources, a hundred times better than back home; that's exactly why I came here."

Once he started talking, he couldn't stop.

The driver kept talking as he drove; it wasn't like chatting, more like reporting his happiness to the world.

"My wife is pregnant with our second child, over four months now."

His voice suddenly softened a notch.

"She just wouldn't listen, still going to help serve food at the factory while pregnant. I told her to rest, that I'd make enough by driving a few more trips. She wouldn't listen, saying she wanted to save up more while she still could, so we could buy a house in our hometown after the baby is born."

He shook his head.

"My wife, she's just stubborn, same as me."

"By the way, little brother, what are you doing going to the Chengdong Industrial Zone in the middle of the night?"

The driver turned to look at him at a red light,

"There aren't many cars on the road over there, and most people don't like going that way. Luckily, I live in that area, and I happen to be heading to the factory to pick up my wife from her shift. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to hail a ride at this hour."

Su Chen kept a straight face.

"A photoshoot. The factory ruins are perfect for pictures."

"Oh—"

The driver realized suddenly,

"Wasteland style, right? I've seen it on Douyin; it's really cool. You standing in front of a broken wall in that outfit? Perfect."

The light turned green, and the car started moving.

"Give me an autograph when you're done!"

The driver said happily,

"I'll go back and tell Huzi that Dad picked up a handsome coser; he'll be thrilled."

Su Chen's mouth twitched.

"Sure."

The lights outside the car window retreated.

The further they went toward the east, the fewer high-rises there were, and the streetlights became sparser.

The building silhouettes changed from glass curtain walls to brick-concrete factories, from office buildings to warehouses piled with scrap metal.

The smell of the air changed too.

Rust, concrete dust, and the incessant low rumble of some machine in the distance.

Su Chen's fingers tapped on his knee twice.

The system had a red coordinate point hanging in the corner of his vision, blinking.

Getting closer.

"Distance to target coordinates: 11.3 kilometers. The strange entity's life signs are stable; no spread has occurred yet."

Eleven kilometers. At this speed, about eight minutes.

Su Chen glanced at the swaying safety charm on the rearview mirror.

The red tassel swayed back and forth with the bumps.

He remembered the driver's words from just a moment ago.

'My wife is helping serve food at the factory over there.'

Chengdong Industrial Zone.

Factory.

Su Chen's fingers stopped.

—

At the same time.

Yongchang Steel Structure Factory.

Covering about three thousand square meters, they did steel structure prefabrication work.

Tin roof, red brick walls, uneven concrete slabs on the ground that hurt to walk on.

But tonight, the entire factory was bright.

Work had come in.

A big job.

The steel beam order for the new commercial complex in the north of the city had landed; the deadline was tight, the volume was large, and the profit was high.

The old foreman, Zhang Tiezhu, stood in the workshop, grinning from ear to ear. He took off his safety helmet to fan himself, his white hair standing on end under the lights.

"Brothers, give it everything you've got! If we finish this batch, the year-end bonus will be doubled!"

Electric welding arcs flickered one after another, blue-white sparks splattering all over the ground.

The young welder, Xiao Sun, flipped up his mask, a half-finished cigarette still dangling from his mouth that he hadn't had time to throw away,

"Uncle Tie, is it really double?"

"When have I, Zhang Tiezhu, ever made an empty promise?"

Old Liu, who was cutting steel beams nearby, laughed.

Fifty-eight years old, he had worked his whole life, wearing a yellowed knee pad on his left knee; the calluses on his hands were thicker than his gloves.

"Less talk, more work. Xiao Sun, that seam of yours is crooked, rework it!"

Xiao Sun chuckled, stubbed out his cigarette, pulled down his mask, and the arc light lit up again.

In the logistics area, a simple prefab building served as a temporary canteen.

A woman in her thirties stood in front of the stove.

Ponytail, apron, nimbly tossing the large iron wok.

Her lower abdomen was slightly rounded, only visible when she bent over to lift the wok.

"Sister-in-law, you're pregnant and still not resting?"

Outside the serving window, a young worker holding a food basin spoke quickly.

The woman smiled, her eyes curving into crescents—the exact same way of smiling as in a certain photo clipped to a rearview mirror by a plastic clip.

"How is it enough to rely solely on my husband driving for a ride-hailing service? I want to save up more while I can still move; by the time the second baby is born, we'll have enough for a down payment back home."

"Sister-in-law, your husband is really lucky. But take care of your health."

"It's fine, women back in our hometown are tough; we still work in the fields while pregnant. Besides, Jingzhou's medical conditions are good; I'm at ease having the second baby here."

Steam rose from the stove, blurring her face.

But that smile remained clear.

Her name was Chen Xiaohui.

Her husband was currently in the car, chatting with a young man in a black trench coat about Huzi being in senior kindergarten.

—

11:37 PM.

The factory floor shook once.

Not much.

Like the vibration caused by a heavy truck driving over a bumpy road in the distance.

The welder Xiao Sun looked up, his eyes blinking under his mask.

"An earthquake?"

Old Liu was squatting on the ground, calibrating the cutting line without even looking up.

"Jingzhou isn't even on an earthquake belt, what are you talking about? It's probably that pile driver next door—"

"It shook again."

This time, everyone felt it.

The concrete floor beneath their feet was trembling.

It wasn't the indirect vibration from afar—it came from directly below, from deep underground.

Like something was turning over.

Xiao Sun's welding torch dropped.

It wasn't that his hand slipped; it was that the hair on his arms had all stood on end.

Zhang Tiezhu's smile vanished.

His instinct from thirty years of construction work allowed him to make a judgment in 0.5 seconds—

"Everyone walk outside! Don't run!"

The workers put down their tools and began moving toward the factory gate.

The logistics area moved too.

Chen Xiaohui turned off the stove and walked toward the exit, supporting each other with two other female colleagues.

Her hand protected her belly, her steps a little faster than the others.

The third tremor came.

This time it was completely different.

It wasn't a tremor.

It was a tearing.

The concrete floor of the factory exploded, a crack splitting from the middle; within three seconds, the width expanded from a fingernail to a fist, then to an arm.

A stream of gas surged from the crack.

Not dust, not steam.

It was black, thick, like liquid smoke.

The moment that black gas touched the air, all the lights in the factory flickered simultaneously.

All electric welding arcs extinguished at the same time.

The temperature plummeted; the breath Xiao Sun exhaled turned into white mist.

The crack was still expanding.

Black mist surged from the ground, swirling into a slow-rotating vortex under the remaining light.

And then—

In the direction of the exit, a loud bang.

The steel corridor leading to the factory gate collapsed with a roar, steel beams twisting and crashing down, broken bricks and concrete blocking the only exit.

Chen Xiaohui's feet were nailed to the spot.

She looked at the blocked exit, then turned to look at the widening crack behind her.

The black mist in the crack began to condense.

Condensing into a silhouette.

People only saw two eyes.

Or rather, not eyes, but two dark red spots of light burning deep within the black mist.

The thing that crawled out of the crack stood up.

Four legs, the joints of each leg reversed.

The texture of its skin was like scorched bark, with the same black mist flowing over its surface as was in the crack.

No mouth, at least not one that could be seen.

But when it made its first sound—

Everyone's knees went weak.

It wasn't a howl, it wasn't a roar; it was a frequency, extremely low, so low it didn't sound like a sound, but more like the vibration of a dull knife slowly dragging across bone.

The safety helmet in Zhang Tiezhu's hand dropped.

He wanted to pick it up, but his fingers wouldn't obey.

Xiao Sun knelt on the ground, hands supporting himself on the concrete slab, his arms shaking—not because of fear, but because his muscles were spasming.

Chen Xiaohui leaned against the wall, one hand tightly protecting her belly, the other hand covering her mouth.

She didn't make a sound.

The strange beast's dark red light spots slowly swept across the factory. Sweeping over every person.

Then it moved.

—

The ride-hailing app's navigation prompt sounded.

"Arriving at the destination in five hundred meters."

Su Chen felt it.

No system reminder needed.

The air had changed.

Seeping in through the gap in the car window, it was no longer the smell of rust and dust.

It was a colder, wetter scent, carrying a kind of putrid, cloying odor.

The car was slowing down.

The road ahead was blocked by barriers with warning tape, and a few people in reflective vests were waving flashlights.

In the distance, from the direction of the factory, came an extremely dull vibration.

The ground trembled slightly.

The family portrait on the rearview mirror swayed twice.

The driver's smile was gone.

"What's going on?"

He stopped the car and leaned forward to look ahead.

High above the factory in the distance, something was rising.

Black.

Not smoke.

Su Chen's hand had already reached into the inner pocket of his trench coat.

His fingertips touched the cold edge of the mask.