"@everyone, please save my child first! I beg you!"
Some people who had been asleep were woken up by the relentless buzzing, grumbling in their dark rooms before reading the messages and falling silent.
"I'll help you coordinate. @Lüsong Hasn't Moved In Yet, who has his phone number? Call him and tell him to pick someone up. Name your price, he'll come. What's the patient's room number? I'll head there right away to help carry them down," Wang Qiqi said in the group chat, her tone switching to one of command, trying to impose order on the panic.
"We're in Building 13, Unit 501," came the immediate reply.
[Wang Dazhao No. 1]:"I have his number. I just called Lüsong and asked him to come save someone. He said if he's going to risk his life going out in this, with the bugs and the curfew, it'll cost sixty thousand. A flat fee. Otherwise, he won't come. Last time we took his unlicensed car to get medicine, he also asked for an outrageous fare. The man has no heart."
The account "Young Master I Have Kids" weakly sent a voice message, the speaker's voice ragged with fever and fear: "We'll pay, we'll pay! Please, just tell him to come quickly! Sixty thousand, we have it!"
[Wang Dazhao No. 1]:"Then hang on a bit longer. He's coming from across the city, said it'll take at least half an hour in the dark, avoiding patrols."
Wang Cuihua sent a voice message, her voice thick with sleep and judgment: "People these days are so crazy for money. Heartless."
That was the end of the active chat, the information was from a few minutes ago. Jing Shu sat up in bed, the phone's glow lighting her determined face. She went downstairs, the tiles cool under her feet, and stood outside her father bedroom door, listening. It was quiet inside, only the sound of steady breathing. Jing Shu thought, adults might manage to hold on, might endure the fever's rollercoaster, but children were different. Their small bodies burned through reserves too fast.
Children are the hope for life to continue, a fragile thread to a future, especially in the apocalypse. Even someone like Jing Shu, who had grown numb and accustomed to life and death in her previous life, still felt a stubborn, aching desire for more children to survive. What's more, for Jing Shu now, helping them was just a small effort, a calculated risk that could save an entire family of three. It was a weight she could bear.
Thinking this through, Jing Shu began typing with swift thumbs even as she moved, pulling on sturdy pants and a thick sweater. She rubbed strong medicated oil on her neck and wrists, then zipped herself into the full body protective suit, sealing every seam. The first and unbreakable rule of saving others was to ensure she didn't throw herself into preventable danger and create more trouble, more victims.
Her message appeared in the chaotic chat: "@Wang Dazhao Unit 1, call that person back and tell him he doesn't need to come."
Then, directly: "@Young Master I Have Kids, I have an energy car. I'll take you to the hospital now, free of charge. Come straight downstairs, I'll be waiting in front of Building 13. @Wang Qiqi, please follow along to help look after them."
Jing Shu's message exploded into the half asleep group chat like a cannon shell, stirring up huge, rippling waves of shock.
[Wang Dazhao No. 1]:"@Xiaoshu Villa District, got it! I'll make the call right now. So the energy car in the community is yours? That's… awesome!"
Wang Cuihua sent another voice message, her tone completely changed: "There are still good people in the world. I hope the child makes it. Bless you."
Jing Shu was already in motion. She grabbed her keys, smeared medicated oil on the car's headlights and door handles to repel insects, and backed the silent energy car out of the villa's garage. Soon, she saw figures stumbling from the entrance of Building 13. Wang Qiqi, the burly, dark skinned group admin, was leading the way, carrying the limp child wrapped in a blanket while the father, swaying, supported the weeping mother. Their hair was disheveled, their faces pale and drawn with illness and terror. The mother was already a mess of tears, barely able to stand. Jing Shu quickly jumped out, helped bundle them into the back seat, then slid behind the wheel. Five people, a desperate cargo, sped toward the nearest hospital, Jing Shu pressing the accelerator to the floor, the electric motor whining softly.
"Just you alone?" Wang Qiqi asked from the passenger seat, surprised. He had always thought Jing Shu's family of three was very ordinary, quiet, keeping to themselves. But now the more he looked, the less ordinary they seemed. The only person in the entire community who owned a private energy car lived quietly in the villa district, low key to the extreme. And in such a critical moment, this young woman risked herself to help others, asking for nothing in return. It proved an old saying he vaguely remembered: sometimes, the wealthier a person is, the more cultivated and responsible they can be.
"My mom has to get up at four to work, so I didn't wake her. I can handle this myself," Jing Shu replied, her eyes fixed on the dark road ahead, illuminated by the medicated oil smeared headlights that cut a swaying path through the swirling clouds of insects.
Once the energy car passed sixty kilometers an hour, its electric battery alone couldn't sustain the speed, it would switch seamlessly to its gasoline hybrid engine. The speedometer needle was already quivering past 110. The young couple, both parents burning with fever, were focused entirely on their unconscious child and hadn't noticed the shift in engine sound or the dangerous speed. Wang Qiqi did notice, his eyes widening slightly at the smooth, powerful acceleration, but he wisely stayed silent. He didn't ask the obvious, dangerous question: how do you still have gasoline in times like this? Where did you get it?
Soon his attention shifted again to his own discomfort. Wrapped tightly in her spotless, rustling full body suit, Jing Shu sat against impeccably clean car seats. The faint, astringent fragrance of medicated oil filled the air, a clean smell that highlighted his own grime. Embarrassed, Wang Qiqi discreetly lifted himself slightly off the seat, trying to keep his filthy, worn clothes from directly staining the pristine fabric.
"You can sit properly. It's fine. The seats can be cleaned," Jing Shu said, not taking her eyes off the road as she braked hard into a sharp turn and hit the gas again. The force shoved Wang Qiqi sideways, and he smacked his head against the car doorframe with a dull thud.
He opened his mouth in a silent gasp of pain, feeling even more humiliated, and gingerly lowered himself back onto the cursed clean seat, deciding to stop moving.
They quickly arrived at Yuwen Hospital. Brilliant lights lit up the night, a blazing island in the darkness that drew swarms of black fungus beetles like a macabre beacon. Patrol staff in heavy gear sprayed insecticide from backpack tanks in a continuous, toxic mist, the chemical smell warring with the odor of sickness.
After two rounds of terse security checks, where their temperatures were taken and their story hastily verified, Jing Shu finally got the family inside the main doors and instantly understood what Su Lanzhi had meant by "no more space." The hospital lobby and every adjacent corridor were so densely packed with people that not even a single step could be taken freely. People could only shuffle forward by squeezing against each other, a slow, feverish tide of humanity.
The hospital itself, despite the crowd, was eerily quiet. No one dared speak above a whisper. A large LED screen on the wall displayed a stark message in red: "Notice: Anyone who produces noise exceeding 50 decibels twice will be removed by security. Infants excluded. Critical patients please proceed directly to the critical ward registration."
Jing Shu wondered briefly if the reason for the unnatural hush was because most people, like her, didn't know exactly how loud 50 decibels was. Someone like her, who had never studied physics much, certainly didn't have a reference. Was it a normal speaking voice? A cough? The fear of the unknown was a powerful silencer.
Still, she was utterly stunned by the sight before her, countless patients, some barely upright, stood holding their own IV bottles aloft on makeshift poles, the bags swaying like strange fruit. Others sat on the floor, heads leaning against walls, eyes glassy. The scene was overwhelming, a vision of collective suffering that stole the breath.
A stern faced security aunt, looking exhausted, pulled the confused, weeping family aside and without ceremony handed them a small numbered slip: 098. She pointed a bony finger toward a distant, crowded window. "Triage. Wait in line." The couple nearly broke down completely, sobbing. Jing Shu quickly stepped forward, her clear voice cutting through the mumblings.
"This child is not going to make it waiting in that line. You need to register for a critical ward number. Look at him." Jing Shu gently pulled back the blanket, showing the security woman the child's ash gray, unconscious face. The woman's expression tightened, and with a curt nod, she led Jing Shu, who carried the child, and the weak, stumbling couple on a different path, straight toward the critical ward, bypassing the sea of people.
Wang Qiqi stayed behind to wait for any updates from the regular line, promising to notify Jing Shu via text as soon as something came up. "I'll hold the fort here," he said. Along the hurried walk, the couple wept quietly, their words slurred by fever, and repeatedly thanked her, their gratitude a broken mantra.
The critical ward was in another league of chaos. It was less a ward and more a cavernous overflow space. People lay sprawled on gurneys, on mats on the floor, in every direction. Some were already dead, covered with sheets. Some were on the verge, their breathing a horrible rattle. Some were still undergoing frantic resuscitation by teams of nurses. The atmosphere was thick with despair and the smell of antiseptic, sickness, and death. Doctors, red eyed from exhaustion, moved between stations like ghosts, working through the night with mechanical efficiency.
Fortunately, one young doctor, his white coat stained, managed to spare a moment after seeing the child's condition. Without a word, he launched straight into a series of emergency procedures, inserting an IV line, administering an injection. At last, the child was hooked up to a drip. The doctor tossed out one sentence like a verdict, not looking at them: "If he doesn't wake up and his fever doesn't break within half an hour, the chance of survival will be very low. We have no pediatric ICU beds. You wait here." Then he rushed off to treat another convulsing influenza patient.
In this ward, every second counted. Doctors had no time for explanations, no bandwidth for comfort.
The child's mother, hearing this, let out a choked whimper and fainted on the spot, slumping to the dirty floor, leading to another small bout of chaos as her husband and a nearby nurse tried to rouse her. Finally, they settled the mother on a spare mat. The father crouched beside his wife, holding her hand, leaving Jing Shu sitting quietly on a low stool in the noisy, grim ward, watching over the tiny bundle on the gurney.
The atmosphere was too familiar. The hopeless eyes, the numb tears, the waiting. In her previous life, Su Lanzhi had collapsed from severe heatstroke. Jing Shu and her father had dragged her to a hospital much like this one. She too had been left in a corridor, left to fate, with a similar deadline hanging over them. Fortunately, she had survived. Jing Shu still felt a pang of that old, desperate gratitude.
The half hour deadline loomed, each minute stretching like tar. Jing Shu turned her eyes to the little one. He was dirty, yes, his clothes stained, but under the grime he had been an adorable child. Now, though, his face was pale as wax, eyes shut, completely unconscious, barely stirring.
After thinking it through, weighing risks against that fragile hope, Jing Shu tried something. She took out her water bottle, which contained a very mild dilution of Spirit Spring water, and, shielding the action with her body, managed to coax a few drops between the child's slack lips. Ten minutes passed. Nothing changed. The child lay still. Over forty minutes had now gone by since the doctor's statement, and there was still no response, no change in his shallow breathing. A cold dread settled in Jing Shu's stomach.
Sighing inwardly, she decided to gamble. This was it. Using the dropper from the medicated oil bottle she carried, she carefully extracted a single, full, undiluted drop of the precious Spirit Spring water from her hidden supply and forced it into the child's mouth, massaging his tiny throat to trigger a swallow.
Then she waited, her own heart pounding loud in her ears.
Within five minutes, a change occurred. A faint flush returned to the child's cheeks. Then, a loud, healthy, indignant wail suddenly pierced the din of the ward. Jing Shu was caught off guard, jumping slightly. Soon, the same young doctor rushed back, drawn by the sound. He reexamined the child, checking his pupils, his pulse, his temperature. He muttered in surprise, half to himself, "The antiviral medication doesn't act this quickly. How did his vitals stabilize already? It's… unusual." He shook his head, then said to Jing Shu, "He's out of immediate danger. Feed him something if you have it. Hydration and calories."
Jing Shu hurriedly fished out a small bottle of milk formula she had brought, prepared with their clean water. The child gulped it down greedily, still unsatisfied. She emptied the couple's pockets of the few crackers and sugary snacks they had and fed all of it to him. Still he fussed for more, his cries now strong and demanding. Jing Shu knew, with a profound and thrilling certainty, that it was the Spirit Spring's effect. It had not just saved him, it had revitalized him.
"So the Spirit Spring really can save lives," she thought, the realization settling deep within her, a new and formidable piece of knowledge. This terrible, accidental midnight trip had revealed something truly extraordinary, a secret weapon whose value was beyond any supplies she had hoarded.