"Cluck cluck cluck!" Xiao Dou let out a series of indignant, miserable screams as Jing Shu lifted her up by the wings, holding the struggling, surprisingly heavy hen aloft. When she had heard Grandma Jing's panicked sobs over the phone, her own heart had clenched like a fist. Her first, terrible thought was that something had happened to Grandpa Jing.
Only after hearing that it was her third aunt Jing Lai and her cousin Wu You'ai who had caught the viral flu did she finally relax, a wave of cold relief washing over her. In her previous life, encountering such a thing meant leaving it to fate, a grim wait for death or recovery. But in this life, she possessed the Spirit Spring.
"Go back to your nest and stay there. If you mess with the other chickens again, pecking them and stealing their food, I'll pluck you and stir-fry you into a big plate of spicy chicken," Jing Shu said sternly as she tossed the thirty-something jin (about 15-16 kilograms) hen four or five meters away. It landed neatly with a soft thump in front of the luxurious chicken coop Jing An had specially built for it, a small wooden house padded with a deep layer of clean, comfortable dry hay.
Yes, at first they had kept Xiao Dou with the other chickens and ducks, thinking she would integrate. But she had immediately lorded over them all, bullying the smaller birds, eating up all their feed, even daring to fight with the pigs for slops, and most outrageously, she had tried to sneak drinks from the cow's milk bucket.
The whole chicken pen and cowshed had been thrown into utter chaos by her antics. Whenever Su Lanzhi and Jing An tried to catch the rogue hen, she ran with shocking speed, zigzagging around the yard with Su Lanzhi chasing her with a broom, huffing and puffing, nearly tripping and falling into the fish pond on more than one occasion. The perfect soundtrack for this scene would have been a cartoon tune: "You can't catch me, I'm just this strong, hahahahaha!"
After Jing Shu finally managed to corner and catch the exasperating Xiao Dou, giving her a firm talking-to, Jing An had taken pity and made her an independent deluxe coop, separating her from the others. Only then did she quiet down somewhat, though she retained a defiant glint in her beady eyes. She may have the body of a chicken, but she clearly possessed the mischievous, destructive soul of a husky dog.
"Come on, let's go see what's happening." After finishing the frantic call, Jing An threw on his protective suit over his regular clothes, his hands fumbling with the zipper in his anxiety, ready to rush out the door immediately. He had clearly lost his usual composure.
Now, anyone who caught the viral cold was already considered to be stepping through the gates of death. With hospitals officially refusing new patients and basic medicines utterly unavailable on the open market, it was basically a death sentence, a slow or fast decline everyone had witnessed.
"Dad, don't panic. Rub on some medicated oil first, cover up completely. Last time when I saved that family of three, I asked the doctor for extra doses of a special experimental medicine. It worked very well. I still have some left. I'll get it now." With that, Jing Shu hurried to her room, fetched two regular-looking cold tablets from a drawer as a decoy, and rushed with the agitated father out the door toward Jing Lai's house in the crowded old city district.
Jing Shu took the wheel. His emotions were too unstable, his hands trembling slightly. In his heart, of his three sisters, he felt the most guilt and responsibility toward Jing Lai. The daily, grinding work of caring for their aging parents had fallen to her for years, a burden she bore without much complaint. Of the three siblings, her life was objectively the hardest, which only deepened his regret and sense of obligation.
Even though Jing Shu said she had special medicine, so many people were dying every day from this precise illness. The images from the hospital haunted him. He was terrified, deep in his bones, of losing another piece of his family.
Outside, Wu City was still an oven. The temperature held stubbornly at 47°C during the day. Rumor had it that Chongqing and Wuhan had already hit 50°C, officially surpassing Turpan's old record of 49.6°C. People were still collapsing from heatstroke daily, but with no electricity for fans and certainly no air conditioning, a grim, weary adaptation was taking place. People moved slower, spoke less.
Recently, CCTV news segments, in a bid to offer practical advice, had been promoting an African custom: smearing mud mixed with a little precious animal fat or oil all over the body. It was said to keep off both extreme heat and bugs, and was considered hygienic enough that one could theoretically go for years without a proper bath. Some truly desperate people had already started imitating it, swearing in their social media circles that they would only wash the caked mud off once normal water supplies returned, treating it like a survival badge.
When Jing Shu pushed open the door to her aunt's apartment, a wave of stagnant, superheated air hit her face, thick with the smell of sickness and sweat. Grandpa Jing was pacing restlessly in the stiflingly hot room, his face etched with worry, while Grandma Jing sat on the edge of the sofa, sobbing uncontrollably, her shoulders shaking. On the sofa itself lay her wan third aunt, Jing Lai, who was muttering irritably, her voice weak but stubborn: "When Jing An comes, don't cry like I'm dying already. It's just a fever. The hospital said they'd notify us once medicine arrived. Others have endured, so we'll endure too. We'll just drink more water. Fine, fine, I get it. We'll drink more boiled water."
Grandma Jing clutched her daughter's limp hand and wept bitterly, her words pouring out in a stream of grief. "Why are us old folks fine, but my poor daughter has to suffer like this! How cruel is this world, making the white-haired have to bury the black-haired! This shouldn't be!"
Wu You'ai, Jing Lai's teenage daughter, lay sprawled on a worn divan in the corner, large headphones covering her ears, seemingly absorbed in a manga on her tablet. She was surrounded by open bags of snacks and a half-empty bottle of water, seemingly intent on finishing her treats before potentially meeting her end, a bizarrely calm resignation.
The arrival of Jing Shu and her father only made Grandma Jing cry harder, the sight of family amplifying her fear. Elderly people are often deeply emotional; when overwhelming sadness or fear struck, the tears flowed freely, a release they couldn't control. The thought of losing both her daughter and granddaughter left her feeling utterly helpless and shattered.
"Give them the special medicine first. If it doesn't work, I'll call in every favor I have, pull every string to get them into a hospital somehow. There's always a way. There has to be a way." He stood in the center of the cramped, hot living room, hands planted on his hips, adopting his usual commanding posture when he was deeply anxious and trying to project control.
"What special medicine?" Wu You'ai finally looked up from her manga, her curiosity cutting through her resigned facade. The word 'special' had caught her imagination.
"Medicine that cures illness. Hurry up and take it. Open your mouth." Jing Shu approached, handing over the pills with a small cup of water she'd brought from their supplies.
As a child from a single-parent family, Wu You'ai had grown up withdrawn and introverted, with little interest in mingling with extended family or others. She preferred losing herself in daydreams, imagining herself as the heroine of some intricate fantasy or sci-fi world. The anime archetype of the reclusive, bespectacled shut-in girl seemed tailor-made for her.
Unlike most quiet introverts, however, when she did decide to speak, she often couldn't stop, tumbling down rabbit holes of obscure references or hypothetical scenarios. In her own mind, everyone was merely a side character in the grand stage play of her life.
When Jing Shu offered her the medicine, Wu You'ai flatly refused and immediately exposed the decoy: "This is just White Plus Black brand cold medicine. The most common kind. How is that special? For viral colds now, people go straight for IV drips at the hospital. Nobody just takes over-the-counter pills. Did you buy this from those shady scalpers? Then we definitely shouldn't take it. It's probably expired or fake."
Jing Shu didn't bother to argue or explain. Time was wasting. She simply stepped forward, grabbed her by the shoulder, pinched her nose and jaw to force her mouth open, shoved the pill in, and washed it down with a firm gulp of water laced with one precious drop of Spirit Spring. She didn't even mention how distressed she felt wasting a whole drop on this bratty cousin, and here Wu You'ai dared to refuse it.
Grandma Jing, shocked but pragmatic, patted her back as she coughed. "Good child, it's life-saving medicine. Stop fussing and just swallow. Swallow it all."
Wu You'ai: "..."
She felt as though she had just been force-fed some mysterious poison. Was this the classic setup for her to die and then transmigrate into a novel's world? Still, she thought with morbid excitement, that was arguably better than just dying boringly of a flu in a hot apartment.
Indeed, she wasn't particularly afraid of death. In her rich internal narrative, dying likely meant an exciting transmigration, a new adventure in a world with magic or futuristic technology.
Within minutes of ingesting the Spirit Spring-laced water, a dramatic change occurred. Both Jing Lai and Wu You'ai's stomachs let out loud, prolonged growls. The listlessness vanished, replaced by a ravenous, almost animal hunger. They began devouring any food in sight like starved wolves, their eyes wide.
Grandma Jing, seeing this sudden appetite as a positive sign, sprang into action. She cooked a huge pot of rice on their single induction burner, opened their last jar of pickled cucumbers, a small precious jar of dried beef, fried over a dozen eggs from their dwindling stash, and stir-fried a medley of dried mushrooms, wood ear fungus, and the last of a cabbage. The two patients ate, then ran to the bucket toilet, and came back to keep eating, a cycle of consumption and evacuation that baffled everyone.
"Your medicine's probably fake, or some weird stimulant." Wu You'ai mumbled between massive bites of egg and rice, her mouth full.
The whole family watched this bizarre recovery with a mix of relief and deep unease. It was too fast, too physical.
"Then do you still feel like you have the cold? Any fever? Body aches?" Jing Shu asked calmly, watching them. She had saved that child before with just a single drop, and the recovery, while quick, hadn't been this metabolically frantic.
"I feel… full of strength. Like I could run a marathon. Or lift that sofa." Wu You'ai clenched her fists, her eyes bright behind her glasses, and nodded firmly.
"My symptoms are gone too. The headache, the chills, the sore throat… all gone. I think I'm actually cured." Jing Lai's cheeks were already flushing with a healthy pink, the pallor completely gone. She looked better than she had in weeks.
"That's good. That's wonderful. Maybe the medicine's just too strong and has some side effects, makes you hungry. Eat all you want, fill yourselves up. There's more rice." Grandma Jing quietly wiped her tears away, this time tears of bewildered joy, then bustled off to cook another batch of rice. At this moment, she was brimming with a giddy relief, laughing even when she looked at Grandpa Jing's stunned face. This was true relief after a disaster, a joy that made her whole body feel light, as if she could float.
Jing Shu also grabbed a bowl and chopsticks, eating some of the eggs and cabbage calmly as she internally analyzed, "The Spirit Spring dose was clearly too much for their condition. For critically ill patients like that baby, one drop was necessary. For less severe cases like Aunt Jing Lai and Wu You'ai, who were early-stage, half a drop would have been enough. The excess vital energy probably got diverted into supercharging their metabolism, speeding up digestion and expulsion of the virus and toxins. Hence the insane hunger and… trips to the toilet."
Jing An finally relaxed too, the tension draining from his shoulders. He sat down and ate a few fried eggs. "Mom, Dad, why don't you and Third Sister, and You'ai, come stay at my place for a while. It's too hot here. You don't have electricity for air conditioning, no running water for toilets, no fresh food. And who knows when the Earth's Dark Days will actually end. You can come stay with us, and come back after things improve." He made the offer sincerely, looking at his elderly parents' exhausted faces and his sister's now-recovering but still vulnerable state.