Even though Jing Lai had fervently hoped nothing would go wrong that day, something catastrophic did. Just yesterday, a large group of people had come into the supermarket cafeteria drenched from the rain, their heads and clothes crawling with red nematodes they had not fully cleaned. Some still had live red nematodes clinging to them from before and had inadvertently carried the pests inside the dry, crowded space.
On top of that, it was the first day of the extended self-service dining promotion, and the place was packed with hungry, bargain-seeking residents.
The red nematodes, disturbed and agitated, loved to jump around when dry or jostled, and this perfect storm of conditions led to a disaster. They tangled themselves around everyone within leaping range, customers and staff alike, weaving hair and clothing together, rendering large groups immobile.
The scene was pure, screaming chaos. The cafeteria erupted into a tangled mess: people crying out as they were stepped on in the confusion, shrieking as their hair was painfully yanked by connected nematodes, and those who tried to help untangle others ended up trapped themselves. Women with long hair looked like they were being drawn and quartered by invisible threads, and even Jing Lai, watching, felt her own scalp tingle in sympathetic pain at the sight.
Wei Wei was among the worst victims. Her formerly luscious, wavy hair was now intricately tangled into the hair of seven or eight different men nearby, each pulling unconsciously in different directions whenever they moved. She was so angry and humiliated she could have killed them all.
Only Jing Lai stood miraculously unharmed in the middle of the fray. Her own hair was tucked tightly and securely under the fine-mesh rain hat. Wei Wei had laughed at her earlier that morning for the "ugly" hat, but now she stared at Jing Lai with wide, desperate eyes full of envy and regret.
"My niece gave me a manual hair clipper for emergencies," Jing Lai announced loudly, holding up the tool. "I will shave your heads. It's the only way. In our entire community, everyone is already bald because of these worms. There is no shame in it." She stated it as a fact.
"No! I don't want to be bald!" Wei Wei cried on the spot, her voice breaking. Would her husband, who loved her hair, still want her if she looked ugly? The vanity was a last shred of normalcy.
Jing Lai ignored her protests and got to work with grim efficiency, shaving everyone's infested hair off one by one, starting with those most severely tangled. The heavy shears made quick work of the worst knots, then the clippers buzzed, leaving shiny scalps in their wake.
The situation was finally brought under control after an hour of frantic work. The director, arriving later, praised Jing Lai for her quick thinking and decisive action. He immediately arranged for over a dozen clippers to be permanently stationed at the supermarket entrance. From now on, he declared, anyone coming for food would have to have a clean-shaven head, inspected at the door. No exceptions.
There was something strangely, darkly satisfying about seeing all those uniform, shiny bald heads in the serving line afterward. It was a new equality of desperation.
The masses of severed red nematodes swept from the floor would not go to waste either, the director ordered. Boil them in water with some salt, and they could be turned into a protein-rich soup base. Since it was everyone's own hair that had harbored them, surely nobody would complain too much. Waste not, want not.
"Let us make sure nothing like this happens tomorrow!" the director had declared wearily.
But today, an entirely different, larger catastrophe struck: the flood.
People inside the supermarket scrambled up the stairs in a fresh wave of panic as muddy water surged in through the ground floor doors and vents, already reaching knee level within minutes. The floodwater came with a terrifying, silent speed and force. Outside the windows, everything was pitch-black from the rain and early night. Nothing was visible except the shimmer of water reflecting faint emergency lights and the deep, growing roar of rushing waves from the streets.
Jing Lai sighed, a sound lost in the noise, and began directing the crowd upstairs with her loudspeaker while shouting orders to the staff around her:
"Grab every table, door, and wooden board that can float! Bring them upstairs! If the flood reaches this floor too, we will need them to stay afloat! Move!"
In the distance, the armed police vehicles blared sirens and mobilized. There was a massive nearby residential community by the old oil base with over ten thousand people, and this sudden, violent flood had caught everyone completely off guard. After all, it had only rained heavily for three days. How could a flood of this magnitude have come so suddenly, without warning?
Meanwhile, on the national level, China issued a highest-level red alert. Satellite and sensor reports showed global sea levels rising at an unprecedented, alarming rate. Coastal residents across the country were ordered via all channels to evacuate to higher ground immediately. Many low-lying islands were predicted to disappear under the waves within hours.
The Wu City government also issued its own citywide emergency evacuation order. Using the big data alert system, they sent blistering alerts to every registered phone, urging all residents in the low-lying city center to evacuate north toward the foothills immediately, regardless of whether their homes were already flooded or not.
People in higher-altitude areas like the western and northern districts were told to remain where they were for now but stay on high alert and prepared to evacuate if the water continued to rise.
…
[Wang Qiqi]:"@Everyone, the Ai Jia supermarket is completely flooded! The water is heading toward the city center! No idea if it will reach us here, but some neighbors who went to buy food this afternoon are now trapped in the supermarket. I heard the water is already up to the third floor! It's terrifying!"
Wang Cuihua sent a breathless voice message: "Thank goodness we decided to go there in the afternoon instead of this morning! We just got back!"
[Luo Zhu]:"What if the water comes this way? Where do we even run? Our building is only six stories."
[Wang Qiqi]:"Head to the roof, obviously. With rain pouring like this, where else can we go? Hope the roof holds."
Jing Shu, monitoring the chat from her dry villa, stretched lazily. She had already prepared everything they might need. At that moment, she was actually enjoying a cooling cucumber face mask and a plate of cold fried chicken when Wu You'ai came rushing into the room, her face pale.
"Jing Shu, my mom is trapped in the Ai Jia supermarket! She called me just now. The water is already past the third floor, and rescue teams are overwhelmed! Please, lend me your submarine so I can go get her!" Her words tumbled out in a desperate rush.
Jing Shu slapped her own forehead lightly. She had remembered that her father's livestock farm was on the west side of the mountain, on high ground, and her mother's agricultural office was also in an elevated development zone, so there was no flooding threat there.
But she had completely forgotten that the Ai Jia supermarket was located right in the natural flood channel, exactly where the mountain run-off poured into the city basin. All of Wu City's floodwater was rushing through that area into the city's low center, turning half the city into a waterlogged ruin, and the supermarket was at the choke point.
"Don't panic," Jing Shu said, her voice calm. "I gave your mom one of the automatic life jackets last week. Even if the water rises past their floor, she will be safe and floating for a while. If you try to go yourself in this chaos, you will only make things worse, maybe get trapped too. I will go get her. I know how to handle the submarine."
Wu You'ai clenched the fabric of her clothes, her knuckles white with tension. "Just… be careful, okay? Don't push yourself. If something happens to you, Grandma will literally kill me."
"I'm a certified coward, remember? I won't take unnecessary risks. Don't tell Grandma I'm going out. I will be back soon." Jing Shu gave a tight smile.
She quickly donned the sealed raincoat over her clothes and strapped on two automatic life jackets for extra buoyancy. Then she went to the RV garage, uncovered the sleek blue shark submarine, and boarded it. Honestly, she owed a huge, silent thank-you to Su Mali. Without this amphibious vehicle, she would not have known how to handle today's situation at all. A boat would have been smashed by debris.
In her previous life, she had never shopped at the upscale Ai Jia supermarket, being too poor, so she had not realized its critical location in the city's flooding pattern. Luckily, in this life, she had the right tool for the job.
Within the first ten kilometers, navigating flooded but familiar streets, the shark submarine transitioned smoothly from rolling on its retractable wheels to gliding through the water as the depth increased. But navigating in this weather and current was a nightmare. The heavy rain reduced visibility to mere meters, and the surging flood current battered the submarine, creating massive drag. She had to steer carefully, using the headlights sparingly, to avoid crashing into submerged cars, street signs, or building corners.
Fortunately, Jing Shu's excellent night vision and steady hands, honed by cube practice and survival, kept her on course. Otherwise, she would have slammed into a half-submerged utility pole in the pitch darkness.
When she finally arrived in the vicinity of the Ai Jia supermarket, the area was a vast, choppy inland sea. Even the tallest utility poles were completely submerged. The only thing visible above the water was the supermarket's flat concrete rooftop, now crowded with what looked like hundreds of bald-headed survivors, dark shapes huddled against the rain.
And the water was still visibly pouring into the Wu City basin from the higher streets. By her estimate, the water downtown was already thigh-deep on the ground floors of buildings. In her previous life, this was exactly when the government had issued the evacuation order. Her own family had fled empty-handed then.
What was truly tragic was that many people in tall buildings had refused to leave initially, thinking their high-rise apartments would keep them safe above the water. In less than a day, the relentless flood had swallowed entire buildings, submerging rooftops that were dozens of meters high as the basin filled.
Wu City's central basin was so profoundly low-lying that even skyscrapers could not withstand the eventual water level. Compared to that, the mountain foothills were infinitely safer. Jing Shu remembered the sight clearly from her last life: the entire city center had been submerged without a single rooftop showing by the second day. Wu City had turned into Wu Lake, a silent, debris-filled grave.
…
On the rooftop, amidst the crying and shouting, a tense drama played out.
"Jing Lai, can you give me your life jacket? You're a good swimmer. You will be fine without it. My husband has connections and is sending someone to rescue us soon. We will take you with us, I promise," Wei Wei pleaded, her voice shrill. Her bare scalp and lack of her signature, prideful curls made her round face look even bigger and more vulnerable.
"Oh." Jing Lai replied, not looking at her, her eyes scanning the dark water for signs of rescue.
"So… does that mean yes?" Wei Wei pressed, hope flickering.
"No." Jing Lai said flatly.
"Then why did you say 'oh'?" Wei Wei's voice rose in frustration.
"Oh." Jing Lai repeated the non-committal syllable.
"Jing Lai, please! At least give me your raincoat! I'm freezing!" Wei Wei tried another tack, shivering exaggeratedly.
"Oh."
"I get it now! No wonder your husband divorced you! You're heartless!" Wei Wei snapped, grinding her teeth in fury, all pretense of civility gone.
Smack!
A heavy, sharp slap landed squarely on Wei Wei's face, the sound crisp even in the rain. Jing Lai said calmly, her voice low but carrying, "Maybe it's because I hit him too much when he said stupid things that he divorced me. Would you like to find out?"
Wei Wei clutched her stinging cheek, stunned into silence. Then her face crumpled. "…" She burst into helpless, shocked tears. Turns out the usually quiet, competent Jing Lai was actually terrifying when provoked.