The online world was buzzing with an unusual, almost feverish energy. Even the official themes for the New Year's Eve and New Year's Day galas had been hastily updated to include references to the trending topic: Earth's Dark Days. Deep into the night, at three in the morning, platforms like Weibo and the CCTV live broadcast were still going strong, streaming simulations and animations of the predicted celestial body collisions in real time.
Night owls, fueled by a strange mix of anxiety and excitement, flooded social media with photos of their stockpiled food, mountains of instant noodles, bags of rice, and canned goods arranged like trophies. Meanwhile, scientists and popular science accounts posted lengthy threads, boasting about how fortunate it was that Earth sat just far enough away in the cosmic dance to avoid utter destruction, turning a near-cataclysm into a spectacular light show.
In this moment, a peculiar sense of security settled over many people across China. With pantries and cupboards stuffed full, the edge of panic was blunted. Every household had shopped generously, treating the event like the most serious Spring Festival preparation of their lives.
Boom.
The live broadcast feed finally switched. On screen, just as calculated, the distant stars collided in a silent, majestic bloom of light and debris. Jing Shu sat cross-legged on her sofa, squinting at the screen. She couldn't understand the complex astrophysics being discussed by the animated commentators.
She only saw them pointing at graphs and jumping around in professional excitement, while the scrolling comments section moved too fast to read, filled with endless rows of "Whoa! Whoa!" and astonished emojis. Jing Shu felt a bit bewildered, rubbing her eyes. This… this was completely different from the terrifying, world-ending spectacle she had grimly imagined.
Jing Shu had been having trouble sleeping lately, but the repetitive, almost hypnotic footage of the swirling star collision had a strange, lulling effect. Watching the colorful clouds of cosmic dust expand and swirl, she eventually felt her eyelids grow heavy. Before she knew it, she had fallen asleep right there on the couch.
She woke at ten the next morning, groggy, to a world that had fundamentally changed. The first thing she confirmed was that, indeed, the sun was gone. A deep, permanent twilight had fallen. In her previous life, at this exact moment, she had been diligently livestreaming, trying to gain followers by sharing her "reaction" to the astronomical event.
The news on the television provided a grim checklist for the new reality. "Reports indicate that different regions are experiencing varying degrees of dust fallout. Overnight, 3 to 5 centimeters of dust accumulated and it continues to fall at a steady rate. Citizens going outdoors are strongly advised to wear protective masks to avoid inhalation and to take all appropriate precautions.
Furthermore, from January 1 onward, limits have been placed on medical insurance card spending for over-the-counter medications. Citizens are asked to purchase vitamins and health supplements rationally, without hoarding.
In some industrial regions, the falling dust is carrying residual industrial particles, causing widespread secondary pollution. Many residents have already reported murky or outright black tap water. Authorities are urgently investigating whether this contaminated water is safe to drink."
On this rare Sunday when no one went to work, Su Lanzhi stayed home. The family ate a quiet breakfast of congee and pickles while watching the news updates. After eating, Su Lanzhi, ever practical, pulled on her boots and went out to the reinforced sheds to feed the pigs, cows, and sheep, and to muck out the barns. The enclosed chicken coop was already stiflingly hot and thick with feathers and dust, so she came back in and turned on the air conditioning, setting the entire villa's system to a constant 26 degrees Celsius.
Jing An, meanwhile, hauled a tall ladder outside. He climbed up to carefully sweep the thick layer of grey brown soil off the villa's tempered glass roof. That dense blanket of dirt had turned the already dim interior pitch black, blocking what little ambient light remained.
"Luckily, that tempered glass covers the entire villa roof," Su Lanzhi remarked, watching him work from the window. She shuddered at the thought of the alternative. "Otherwise, the whole place would be full of this dirt, blowing in through every vent." That fancy, expensive glass roof she had once insisted on for its modern look now proved its worth in the most unexpected way.
Indeed, nobody had expected soil, actual dirt, to fall from the sky like rain. The fine particle dust from the star collision, the experts said, wasn't just hanging in the atmosphere blocking sunlight, a significant amount of it was being pulled down by gravity, creating this surreal phenomenon that would likely continue for a long, long time.
Further news reports explained that with the sun obscured, Earth would experience significant cooling. It did cool down, but only at night, dropping just a few degrees. During the daytime, however, temperatures shot up crazily, trapped under the dusty atmospheric blanket. Wu City reported 35 degrees Celsius. Hainan was nearly at a lethal 50 degrees Celsius. Guangdong, Fujian, Sichuan, and Chongqing all saw temperatures exceed 40 degrees Celsius.
It was effectively summer in the permanent gloom.
Jing Shu dressed for this bizarre hybrid environment. She put on athletic shorts and a short sleeve top, but covered them with a light windproof jacket and pants, which she then tucked into knee-high rain boots. She wore a double-layered mask and pulled a wide-brimmed hat low over her eyes before heading out to handle the animal waste and take Number 1, the rooster, for a walk.
Her boots sank into the thick, soft soil with a muffled crunch. Although it was technically daytime, the dimness was so profound it was hard to make out people or objects more than twenty meters away. In the huge, usually well-manicured residential complex, only a few homes had lights on behind curtained windows.
The community streetlights, sensing the darkness, had switched on. They cast pale, futile circles of light on the roads and pathways. Under these lights, visible clouds of mosquitoes mingled with the endlessly drifting dust particles, creating a swirling, murky haze. Jing Shu knew that in the first month of the apocalypse, having these streetlights on at all was an incredible luxury.
The battle chicken, however, was ecstatic. It sprinted ahead like a released husky, flapping its wings in short, enthusiastic bursts to take off from the ground, pecking at the dense clouds of mosquitoes for its breakfast. When Jing Shu called its name sharply, it seemed to understand, turning and racing back to her side with a few happy clucks.
From somewhere further down the hillside, a chorus of buzzing and chirping erupted as other insects, disturbed by the environmental shift, appeared in large numbers. Their collective cries were eerie and relentless. Xiao Dou went into a frenzy, darting here and there to peck at them nonstop. After finishing the waste cleanup, Jing Shu had worked up a sweat beneath her layers. Even regularly drinking the Spirit Spring water didn't make her immune to extreme heat or cold, only to sickness, so she quickly hurried back home to shower.
Not everyone was as prepared. Soon, a visitor arrived. A woman in her fifties, whom Jing Shu recognized as a neighbor from a few villas down, stood anxiously at their gate. She held a damp towel over her nose and mouth as a makeshift filter and had wrapped another towel tightly around her head. "The water from the tap is all yellow with soil now! How can anyone drink it?" she called out, her voice muffled. "The small supermarket outside the community is completely sold out of mineral water. Why don't you go buy more together? We can share a car!"
Jing An, who was just coming back in covered in dust from his cleaning, wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. He had shoveled thick soil away from the external pipes and was still panting. "Not going for now," he replied, thinking of his prodigal daughter who had spent 200,000 yuan to set up a whole-house water filtration and purification system. They didn't need to scramble for bottled water.
"Look, look at this video my brother posted from the city!" the woman insisted, holding up her phone. "Supermarkets there are madness, everyone scrambling for water! Many shelves are already empty. Who knows how long this soil will keep falling? You should at least buy a week's supply from Ai Jia Supermarket while you still can!" Her panic was palpable.
"Really, we're okay for now," Jing An said, firm but not unkind. "If you can't get a ride, I can call a car for you through an app."
The woman quickly refused, waving her hands. "Forget it, forget it. I'll try to find someone else. A round trip ride all the way to the big supermarket costs too much now." And just like that, she turned and hurried off, disappearing into the dusty haze.
Jing Shu watched her retreating figure from the doorway and said, "She just came to hitch a ride?"
Jing An, brushing clumps of dirt from his clothes, nodded. "They saw our lights on and our car here and thought we were heading out to buy water. Figured they'd save on the fare. Alright, I'm done here. I need a shower something fierce."
"Dad," Jing Shu reminded him, "make sure to clear the soil from the filter head at the main intake every day, or it'll get clogged fast."
"Got it," he said, heading inside.
Jing An had spent a good half hour outside just cleaning the mud from the pipes before the water ran clear again. "When will this ever end?" he muttered to himself, looking up at the perpetually grimy sky.
"Look at people in the early apocalypse, so dramatic," Jing Shu thought with a sigh born of bitter experience. Water mixed with soil was unpleasant to drink, gritty and strange, but she knew it was still far better than next year's bloodworm-infested water. Really.
The memory was visceral. One sip and you'd feel many tiny, wriggling bug heads stuck in your teeth while their slippery tails got lodged in your throat. The terrible choice: bite them off and swallow, or pull the whole squirming bug out, chew a few times with a grimace, and then swallow just for the calories?
In her previous life, she had done just that, plucked the pale worms from between her teeth, chewed exactly twenty-eight times to make it seem more like a conscious meal, then swallowed to stave off the hollow ache of hunger. In this life, she absolutely refused to ever try that again.
Back inside, another problem presented itself. Although the tempered glass roof blocked most of the falling dust, it acted like a giant greenhouse panel, absorbing ambient heat with no ventilation to release it. The villa interior was becoming a steaming oven. Jing Shu dragged out the commercial ice machines she'd bought. They hummed steadily, producing bucket after bucket of clear ice.
She placed these buckets strategically around the main living areas to lower the temperature, swapping them out for fresh ones every two hours as they melted. She also made use of the ice, crushing it finely and mixing it with milk she had stored for half a month, which she had already cultured into tangy yogurt. Sweetening the mix with a little sugar, she created bowls of yogurt shaved ice, a refreshing and cool treat in the oppressive heat.
She also took a moment to check the readout from the ten UBC solar panels installed on the south-facing slope. Even under these dim, dust-filtered conditions, they were still generating a trickle of electricity. The sight of the numbers on the monitor made her quietly pleased. With at least eight hours of artificial lighting needed daily, plus essential appliance use, the solar lamps for the animal sheds, and the central air conditioning fighting the heat, the villa consumed at least 40 kWh of electricity daily. One month's usage would cost over 800 yuan at pre-collapse rates, three times that of an average household.
Her ten UBC solar panels in these grim conditions could generate about 30 kWh daily, which was barely enough to cover most of it. If they fell short, the gasoline generator was on standby, and it used just one liter of fuel per day for their essential needs, a more than acceptable backup.
That night, experts on the news continued their attempts to reassure the public. One bespectacled scientist explained calmly, "The water mixed with soil is generally safe to drink, from a biological contaminant perspective. It is recommended to let it settle in a container for a few minutes, then gently transfer the clearer water to another container, repeating the settling process a few times. Finally, be sure to boil it thoroughly before drinking to kill any potential microorganisms."
However, the theoretical safety did nothing to resolve the practical shortages. Reports of water scarcity grew. Then, the first orange high-temperature alert since the collision followed. News tickers began reporting deaths from severe heatstroke across many regions, the victims often the elderly or those without air conditioning.
Even in Jing Shu's own high-end residential community, people had died. And some of them, she knew from brief nods in passing, from seeing them walk their dogs in better times. Their absence now was a silent, chilling fact in the dusty heat.
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战斗鸡 (Zhàndòu Jī)
战斗 (Zhàndòu): To fight, combat, battle.
鸡 (Jī): Chicken.
It sounds almost identical to the Chinese name for the popular mobile game and phenomenon "Angry Birds", which is "愤怒的小鸟" (Fènnù de Xiǎo Niǎo). However, the word for "bird" (鸟) is often colloquially interchanged with "chicken" (鸡) in a funny way. "战斗鸡" directly puns on this.
As usual, I decide to pick a nickname for the hen 小斗 (Xiǎo Dòu)