So Thick?

The power outage and the army's arrival did not provoke much reaction from this peaceful, isolated town. They believed someone would always take care of such things.

So everyone went about their business. With the power out at home and the unusually fierce winds from last night, most people felt a sense of crisis and began stocking up at the town's only supermarket.

Seventy or eighty people suddenly crowded into the small supermarket. Most were neighbors who saw each other all the time, so greetings and small talk became the dominant soundtrack here.

After the incident yesterday, when a stranger had entered the backyard and crushed a toy car, David was worried about his son. He brought Billy along to shop in town and also gave a ride to his Black neighbor, with whom he had a financial dispute.

He did not particularly like this Black neighbor. But today, a tree from David's property had smashed their boathouse. When he went over to discuss compensation, he saw that the classic sedan he had once envied had also been crushed beneath a tree, and he could not help feeling amused.

Then Brent Norton readily agreed to the compensation. Seeing his pitiful carless state, David barely managed not to laugh as he drove Brent to the town supermarket.

While picking out food in the supermarket, David also made a payphone call. The result was the same as before. The signal here seemed to have been blocked, and there was no way to contact the outside world.

Back in the supermarket, David greeted the female cashier at the front counter before heading toward the entrance.

David was something of an oddity in town. While most townspeople earned only a few hundred dollars a month, he made tens of thousands each month from painting, a profession that relied heavily on talent. He was very well known around town.

After living here for so long, he had gradually become familiar with the supermarket employees.

One of them was Ollie, a short, chubby employee wearing small glasses. David got along quite well with him.

After David remarked on the rare bustle in the supermarket, Ollie, who was bagging groceries for paying customers, replied, "Because of the storm, everyone wants to stock up. It's been this busy since we opened."

David nodded in agreement. "What a lousy day."

Though they were talking about the supermarket's hectic business, Ollie was smiling. He liked a lively town. "Everyone's having a lousy day today, aren't they? Good morning, Mrs. Carmody!"

The person Ollie greeted was another well-known figure in town. She was a devout religious fanatic who usually wore a white headscarf and gloves. Every three sentences she mentioned God, and every five, the Bible.

She always came across as a deranged woman. She looked only to be in her thirties, yet everything she said carried an unsettling air.

"So many people are lining up. I really don't know whether that's good or bad, but we'll make do for now."

When someone greeted her, the eccentric Carmody merely leaned close to Ollie, said something strange, and walked into the supermarket.

Watching Carmody leave, Ollie and David exchanged a look and both shrugged.

After saying goodbye to the still-busy Ollie, David soon found his son and his Black neighbor Brent between two shelves.

"Your wife should be a doctor. With handwriting like this, she'd make a fortune in Manhattan." Brent held David's shopping list and took the opportunity to compliment his wife's "beautiful" handwriting.

But David immediately grew wary. Tags like wife, brutal humiliation, and Black neighbor from certain special publications flashed through his mind, making his heart skip. Rather rudely, he snatched the shopping list from Brent's hand and smiled. "Yeah, you need to stare at it for a while before you can understand it..."

How could he let someone else ogle his blonde wife?

Scram!

Brent then picked up the shopping basket, gave David a meaningful look, and left.

David did not think much of it. Billy, on the other hand, cared more about the relationship between the two men. He had seen them arguing before, and with a child's simple mind, he wanted to ease things between his father and the neighbor.

"Did you and Uncle Brent become friends?"

Children found it hard to understand the way adults thought. David shrugged. "Not really friends. It's hard to say."

Shopping time came to an end, and many people were waiting in line to pay. Three people in military uniforms had also appeared in the supermarket. Soldiers occasionally came into town to buy things, so most people simply continued doing what they were doing.

But while they remained so relaxed, white fog drifting over from the other side of the mountain had already swallowed more than half the town and was rapidly spreading this way.

Because the communications system had been completely cut off, the people in the supermarket had no idea the white fog even existed.

Several police cars and fire trucks suddenly sped past the parking lot in front of the supermarket, heading toward David's home. The fire truck sirens drew everyone's attention, and they looked outside.

It had been a long time since anything in town required the fire department. They even wondered whether those old fire trucks could still run. Since both fire trucks had been dispatched, something serious must have happened, right?

People in the store began discussing it, and Billy looked up to ask his father whether something had happened to his mother.

David looked somewhat worried as well, but he still smiled and reassured Billy that everything was fine. Just as he finished speaking, the town's air-raid siren rang out across the sky...

A man emerged from the corner of the street outside the supermarket, followed by a dense wall of white fog. It was only a dozen meters behind him. As he walked, the fog trailed him like a shadowy ghost.

The people in the supermarket recovered from their shock at the air-raid siren and noticed the thick, impenetrable white fog beyond the glass wall.

They fell silent and looked at the fog outside, as well as the staggering middle-aged man, all wondering what had happened out there.

For the moment, everyone set down the goods in their hands and moved to the supermarket's glass exterior wall to look outside.

Some looked worried, while others covered their mouths, wondering whether the white fog outside might be some kind of chemical gas leak often reported in newspapers.

The middle-aged man, who kept looking back every few steps, had bloodstains on his face and T-shirt. It looked like blood from a nosebleed after a fall. When he saw the group inside the supermarket, he froze for a moment before running toward the store. The white fog behind him spread closer as well.

The moment the man entered the supermarket, he shouted urgently, "There's something in the fog!"

The sudden shout startled the silent people in the supermarket.

The man seemed not to notice and kept repeating that there was something in the fog. "That thing dragged John Lee away!"

"Dan! Catch your breath first!"

Ollie knew the middle-aged man. Seeing his terrified, frantic state, he hurried over to comfort him and helped him sit on a large bag of dog food nearby.

Seeing an old acquaintance, the man looked sorrowfully at Ollie, tears in his eyes. "That thing in the fog dragged John Lee away! I could hear him screaming... Close the doors! Close the doors, now!"

After sitting down, he saw the fog behind him about to reach this place and hurriedly told the people around him to close the doors.

Several quick-moving, helpful townspeople obediently shut the supermarket's two glass doors. But some people still did not believe him. They pushed the doors open again and ran out of the supermarket, intending to drive away from this hellish place.

Everyone watched those people rush into the fog without stopping them. But before long, several terrified, despairing screams came from within the mist, frightening the hesitant townspeople into quickly shutting and locking the supermarket's glass doors.

Li Wei felt very lucky. In a nearby forest, he had found an American black bear that was hunting several Little Bears. He saved all of the Little Bears and assimilated the adult black bear.

Then he casually picked the little black bear with the sleekest-looking fur and flew back to town, planning to stuff both the money he was returning and the black bear into Anna's hands. He wondered whether turning the brown bear plushie into a little black bear would fool Anna.

But... could someone tell him why the town was covered in white fog?

Was some giant smoking? Why was it so thick?

Huh...